taking it all the right way
by diopann
Summary: 'I know of someone who can heal him' Judeau says some days after they've rescued Griffith from the tower in Midland. 'I heard the Elf King can right all wrongs. I heard he can heal him.' 'So,' they all agree in their shared silence. 'Let's set sail. Let's take him there.' an au where the eclipse doesn't happen when it happens & they take griff to elfheim to heal him, for notelin
1. flying in just a sweet place

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.  
Arriving there is what you are destined for.  
But do not hurry the journey at all.  
Better if it lasts for years,  
so you are old by the time you reach the island,  
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,  
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

* * *

In this place time is counted by dropsfalling onto puddles of stale water. He knows it's stale. Even if he can't smell it anymore. He can't smell anything after all. Sometimes his head is left propped to the side, the helmet heavy weighing on his exposed neck, and he can witness the drops falling, not just listen.

Not that day though.

From darkness, creatures that bring forth voices of others calling his name try their best again to fool him into hopefulness. Everyone's voices gathered and rounding into a call for him, shaping his name and other words he knows must still be pronounced out there, out of reach.

During the first days, weeks, months, spent in the depths of the king's tower, he could smell and hear everything. He could see. He felt the king's spit on his tired face. And the jailer's hands on his exposed nerves. He smelled himself and recoiled, sweat stained blankets on puddles of piss it was too dark to keep away from when he rolled over in the few moments sleep he could get. The puss from his open wounds, infected by the touch of faeces and rat bites and dead maggots on rotten fruit. He can't smell a thing now.

It's not for the best.

Guts' face appears to him often.

And often the desire to lash out is within him, still.

Until that day.

His head was propped away from the water but teardrops fell on his open flesh from Guts' face. All and any desire for revenge left his body. He hadn't felt himself deflate and suddenly he was small. They stung the same as stale water, and alcohol, and blood, his own or the other's, and those liquids he could never identify, the tears did. They stung the same. Lightly salted, too. But everything stings flesh when it's been torn open, muscles exposed, tendons cut and retreating when their tension is lost, their shapes forming lumps under paper thin skin that'll thin even more. Touch stings. Cloth stings. Voices sting like paper cuts scraping underneath his nails that keep growing despite his will and voices scratch the inside of his head and not even the helmet keeps them out.

The blood of others stings. It stings when he watches her wiping blood clean off Guts' face. It stings when Guts lets her.

He's on Pippin's back. No longer inside that room. He's—

Guts embraced him and he placed his hand on Guts'. He felt Guts' tears stinging his face, and then he'd been picked up, propped on Pippin's back. From there he bore witness to their interaction, Guts' and Casca's, and it was as if they couldn't even see him.

His flesh was already exposed so he couldn't do much more.

Outside the city a girl offered him flowers. They stung his charred wounded hands even as they floated away from him when he let them go and the child he once was ran back to the uneven cobblestone of backstreets stinking of urine and rotten food, the view of the castle left behind, and the sun, and everything else that could reach him obscured in the shape of a tall, broad man's silhouette. He can't smell those backstreets anymore, either, even if they weren't just imagination.

The way the wagon's uneven wheels hit against the road hurt his muscles, his open wounds, his ripped flesh, his cut tendons. No way he'll let them know, though. No way he'll reveal to the rest just how deep he's been cut, just how much he's lost. He has Guts now, at least.

He watched Midland's roads fade into distance behind them, the castle and the tower a speck in the horizon. His eyes were heavy with Charlotte's voice, entwined with Guts', with Casca's. Somewhere all of this was concrete. Somewhere this wasn't just a delusion brought about by the creatures slipping out of darkness, out of the interstices covered in mold that lined the inside of his cell in the tower.

Harsh voices filled the void around him: loud shouting and hoarse screaming. Everyone has their own voice. At night he hears words carried by the wind, and the crackling of the fire. He can't smell the food they're preparing but he knows it's clean. Outside the wagon—as it did outside the tower—time carries on without his trace. This is his home now. This will be all.

The drapes that hide him from view and separate him from the rest of them—and the fire and the voices and the smells he cannot smell—rustle. Their movements match the anticipation building within him and he lifts his face slightly—it's all he can manage—to meet the one he waits for.

Sometimes Judeau, or Pippin, or someone else entirely comes. Their faces, their noses, their mouths, twist and wrinkle and disfigure; they open the drapes as wide as they can, let the sun inside, eagerly, urgently inviting a breeze that should wash it all away to start anew. Is it that important to distract themselves from the one in the wagon? Is he that disgusting? Is he that impossible to look at, to learn to live with, to believe? They smile so wide their eyes wrinkle and their faces crack open like a horse before its legs give in. They smile because he's impossible.

 _Does he look at you in that same way?_

Guts fills the spaces between them with words not of comfort or pity. "Soon, he says, we'll both be back in the battlefield, soon" he repeats. Soon. Yes. But for now, for now Guts changes his bandages and cleans his skin and fills the spaces between them with laughter.

This face doesn't twist, it doesn't wrinkle, this smile is wide and open like a sword, like the sun staring down on the land signaling the best time for attack. For a moment or two he believes in it. He lets himself believe in it. He really truly isn't in that tower anymore. Guts is by him, once more. For a moment he believes.

 _He doesn't look at you in that same way._

The drapes rustle and something on the outside breaks. The spell is broken too. Guts looks at the entrance of the wagon (is that the same anticipation he can see in himself?) and no one comes but they both know who could.

 _Can he even see you?_

Guts waits for someone too. And—again, again—it's not him.

He feels small against the hands that help him inside the armor. Small against this voice telling him that soon.

Soon he'll wield a sword.

Soon they'll meet battle together.

He feels small against the voice not mentioning her and them, even when he already knows, he already heard. It's so easy to forget, so easy to place his own broken hand on those large ones and forgive. He truly believes Guts is with him, here, no longer in the tower.

In this place time is measured by the rising and setting of the sun. The meals brought by Guts, or Casca, or Pippin. The fires lit at night. The voices carried in by strong gusts of wind. The second day he heard their voices, just outside.

The two of them, leaving—again, again—leaving him. And now together.

Casca who had wiped the blood from Guts' face. And Guts who'd let her. They spoke of leaving. Leaving him behind, torn, open, ripped, limp, unmoving, lying on the shredded remains of those who believed, the festering, broken remains of his dream.

And so he lets Guts say soon. Soon they'll be together again, like they're meant to be. He plays their daily game of dress up and dreaming and longing. Guts lifts his arms and positions him inside the heavy impossible armor. But he knows what hides behind those drapes.

The wagon has travelled farther and farther, he knows. Days have passed and they've only stopped nights, the horses too tired, the food too scarce. He doesn't have it in him to ask. He cannot.

"I know of someone who can heal him" he hears on the seventh night.


	2. never no turning back

Judeau spoke softly above the crackling of the fire, not that far from the wagon.

"I know of someone who can heal him," he told the others. There was hesitation in his voice, faint, but it had wavered nonetheless. As if he was scared to bring it up. It was, he explained, a long shot. A story he'd heard from a fairy in a circus. A lie, possibly, a fabrication told to pass the time, nights are long for those enslaved. "I heard the Elf King can restore what's been lost, right what's wrong. I heard he can heal him."

They all carefully watched each other but before any of them could speak the sound of rustling and movement came from the wagon. Guts and Casca were the first to move, but she was closer. She disappeared behind the drapes under their watch until she, and Griffith, came into view again. She'd pulled the drapes aside for all of them to look inside. Griffith, his helmet on, opened his mouth as if to speak. It all fell into place with that silence. He wanted it. Of course he would. The decision was made.

Returning one night to the camp where Gambino waited for him, Guts had come across a nest fallen from its bough on a high tree. One of the birds—featherless, wide mouth and big round head—had been stepped on, maybe by a horse. The other lie on its side, pathetically chirping. As an act of mercy, Guts had cut its head off with his dagger and then buried them by the side of the road. He hated himself each time the sight of Griffith wearing his helmet and his thin frame covered in bandages, reminded him of that night.

Like it did in that moment.

He couldn't leave now, he understood as much. And if someone was to see any of this through—sailing the ocean round in search of an island which might not exist—now that Griffith was—Well. Someone had to see this through. He looked at Casca for a moment before setting his sight back on Griffith. The decision was made. He made his way into the wagon without rush just as she climbed off it and he put his hand—so big on that small body—on Griffith's shoulder and smiled. Soon, he whispered.

That was the first night he slept in the wagon with Griffith, the night that Judeau told them about the Elf King and his island.

He fell asleep after drinking a pitcher of bitter liquor, propped up against the side of the wagon, watching over Griffith's small form, covered in blankets and hay, the almost imperceptible movements of his breathing.

When he woke the next morning it was Griffith who kept watch over his slumber. Guts gave him a smile, placed hand on hand.

"We'll be sailors now, huh? How bout that?"

Griffith's eyes opened wide like he was shocked. He tried to speak—it sounded like a question.

"I'll get you there," Guts knew the kind of risk he was taking. Returning to Griffith's side without ever having found the kind of dream that Griffith would consider worthy. Be proud of. Returning to once again follow in the path Griffith set before him, unseen. Always two steps behind. Two steps behind in returning to Midland before any of this could've really happened, before they had to resort to ineffable means in order to repair the consequences. Maybe some months ago the wounds wouldn't have been so deep on Griffith's body. It's always only a matter of time with him, now what he has left is to give the one he wasted not rescuing Griffith from the unspeakable tortures of the tower to the cause of righting what he's done wrong. What they all have.

Before sunrise Casca called a meeting. Judeau came get him in the wagon, averted his eyes when he saw him helping Griffith get into the armor.

"Casca wants us all to discuss some things," he said from behind the curtains.  
"Uh huh," he was about to say but Griffith looked at him. And he lifted his arm, did his best to place it on Guts' shoulder.

From inside the depths of lonely nights spent at the camp as a child, and loneliness shaped in cells, in the midst of wars he had no interest in but the swinging of his sword, he'd longed for a kind of silent understanding he'd never even bore witness to. His memory obscures the three years that came before he heard Griffith speaking to the princess by the fountain—his memory obscures those feelings too—but there were days, weeks, even months, in which he felt as if he could understand more than he had before. Not just the letters on paper Griffith had helped him decipher. Maybe he wasn't wrong, maybe he hadn't been wrong all along.

So when Griffith effortfully placed his hand on his shoulder, Guts cleared his throat.

"We should discuss them here, with Griffith."

Griffith dropped his hand, and the mouth he had opened in the shape of a circle, a desperate motion to speak, to let out his voice, softened into a smile behind the helmet, and he shrugged into the armor next to Guts.

"Y-yeah. Sure," came the reply.

Soon they all gathered outside the wagon, and Guts opened the curtains wide. Not everyone was there, though. Casca, and Pippin, Gaston and the other raiders, Judeau, Rickert, but so many of them had hanged back, stayed in their own wagons, kept watch over the horses. They were supposed to set off before noon, probably the rest were left in charge of setting up.

None of them climbed on the wagon with Griffith and him. Casca barely attempted to make eye contact with him, not when Griffith was there to see—not that he minded. He'd rather not have to delve into any of that for now, now that he'd made the decision to keep following after Griffith, at least until Griffith's body could lead the way for others again, for himself. What could be put on hold should be put on hold. After all, Griffith's time had stopped somewhere before the incarceration, what right did Guts have to keep going?

"First thing," Judeau spoke softly, "is reaching the shores, acquiring a ship. Which would require some sort of patronage—"  
"What's that?" Gaston voiced Guts' question.  
"Money, for the ship, one large enough to carry us all, and provisions, and arms, and horses, feed for the horses too."  
"Huh."  
"We can just steal it," Guts waved a hand, dismissing any concern that might be forming in the minds of those present.  
"There are always ways," Casca echoed.

It was the way she said it that made Guts look at Griffith. But Griffith was looking away, like he didn't really catch what Casca meant, like he didn't know Guts knew the things Griffith's done for the Band of the Hawk to acquire the funds they needed to survive.

"She's right," he said, cocky. "That's no problem. So we just get us to the beach, huh? Fair enough. We can do that."  
"We'll need a navigator."  
"I called this meeting," Casca raised her voice, "to set down some things first of all. Who's going. No one's forced to come, we won't be fighting any battles so we won't be making any money. Relay this to your subordinates, you're all welcome to leave. If you understand what this journey entails, you're welcome to stay, as well. I will be going—"  
"Me too," Judeau interrupted.

At his side, Pippin nodded. Gaston looked at Guts and then nodded too.  
"All of us here, then," Guts said to Griffith, with a smile.  
"We should reach Port Royal in two or three days. Those leaving can do so then. We'll find a way to get our hands on a ship, hire a navigator, and set sail as soon as possible," at this she looked at Griffith, who nodded slightly. "That's really all that needs to be settled right now."  
"Alright," Judeau said. "We oughta get going then."  
"Uh huh."

Before climbing out of the wagon Guts felt the need to tell Griffith he was going to go get his horse. Griffith smiled, of course, like giving his approval, or his thanks.

Guts rode right beside the wagon, driven by Rickert, watched Casca on her horse a distance ahead of them, talking to Judeau who rode beside her.

Pippin called him after they all ate to settle a fight between Corkus and one of the raiders but he dismissed them. Who cared, he thought, at this point. If Corkus wanted to leave, that'd be better for them all, too. They didn't need him hanging around. This wasn't something easy like a war. It was right after this that Judeau, along with Casca, approached him, finding him at the farthest they could be from Griffith's wagon. The thought that this was the first time in days he'd spoken to Casca without Griffith being close by crossed his mind.

"What is it?" he asked their anxious expressions.  
"I don't know where this place is," Judeau confessed like he'd been keeping some awful secret.  
"What you mean?"  
"I heard about the place from an elf. I told you already, it could've been a lie. But even if it wasn't, I don't know where it is. No navigator can get us there."  
"No human navigator you mean."  
"Huh?"  
"If we find an elf we can get there."  
"Where are we going to find an elf, Guts?"  
The way she said his name sounded off. Like she was forcing herself to utter it.  
"Wherever. You can't be thinking of giving up over this one detail. We could go back to the way things were," he told himself this at night, too. They could all return to what had been before. Before Guts even thought of leaving, and Griffith fought him and lost. They'd return to a time that had been and retrieve all they had lost. Their hopes were all on this. His hopes were all on this. "You can't give up!" he said. He didn't mean to sound so desperate, or angry, or even, maybe, sad. But he did. And Casca's look of shock and Judeau's look of—understanding? Empathy?—only served to underline his belief.

They'd find an elf who'd show them the way. Griffith had done much more with much less. They could at least do this much.


	3. coming inside and safe

On the second day after the rescue she realized Griffith needed help eating. His hands could barely hold onto the spoon, but even with all his effort put into that simple task, without a tongue he couldn't place the food in the right spot inside his mouth. She quickly learned what needed to be done and did it, used her fingers inside his mouth to set the food—soft and easy to chew—under his teeth, and then push it back, near his throat, for him to swallow. She didn't gag even once, despite all her senses telling her she should, but seeing Griffith—proud and brave and so strong—this helpless made her numb to everything else.

She took it upon herself to feed Griffith, let no one else close to the wagon during meals, not even Guts. She could tell herself all she wanted that she was trying to hide the depths of Griffith's helplessness from the others, but mostly she didn't want to put Griffith through the torture of seeing Guts look at him with pity. After all, she understood them better than they did themselves.

On the third day she told Guts to leave on his own, took back the promise of leaving together, because she needed to care for Griffith, and she thought she recognized empathy and understanding on Guts' face. Funny that the one to still be bound to Griffith so tightly would be him, not her. Funny, yes, but a matter of course, she knew. When Guts inevitably left she and Griffith would silently share the loss while she fed him. He'd left them both before, after all. Things would be hard, for a while, but then day by day the rhythm would change. Maybe years later, decades, Guts would appear before them again. Maybe it wouldn't hurt anymore, by then. Maybe.

What she didn't expect was for Guts to agree with Judeau's idea of taking Griffith to some island. The only reason she didn't dismiss the whole thing on impulse the minute Judeau opened his mouth was because she remembered, that night before the end of the war with Chudder, when she healed Guts' wounds with elf dust that Judeau had gotten years before, while he travelled with a band of performers. Maybe it was even that same elf who'd spoken of the island. And she didn't expect Guts to raise his voice like that, a commanding, urgent scream, when he said "You can't give up!" She didn't expect he'll want to find an elf to show them the way.

But maybe she should've, she thought, her head low in thought, as she rode her horse in the vanguard.

After she urged him to leave on his own, they didn't speak in private, just the two of them, for days. Griffith was always there between them, and both their eyes were set on him. Even when he wasn't, physically present, he was always there between them. But it had always been so, after all. That night before they set off to rescue Griffith it wasn't just the two of them lying there in the clearing in the woods, Griffith was there too. She shuddered. The feeling was not unlike the one she had when she'd first confronted Guts about Griffith's feelings for him, about the way Griffith spoke to him, the way he put himself in harm's way for Guts. She still felt invisible and small when the two of them were together, no matter who she clung to. There had to be more. Surely, there had to be a lot more for her.

That day, after Guts announced he was going with them to find that island, they finally spoke again, just the two of them. He went out looking for her after they'd set up camp. She was in her makeshift tent going over the maps—they should be reaching Port Royal by nightfall the next day, barring any delays. And he'd come to ask her to follow him, shown her to a small hill from where they could see the small bonfires that marked their campsite.

"S'like that time," she said, carelessly.  
"It isn't," Guts groaned, scratched the back of his neck. "This little fire, it ain't worthy of him. He's so much more."  
"Yeah..."  
"We'll make it right, huh, we have to."  
"Why did you bring me here?" she wasn't looking at him, and he wasn't looking at her.  
"I don't know," he said, suddenly wrapping his arms around her waist, placing his head on her shoulder. "I don't know," in a small voice.

There had to be more for her than comforting the men she loved and never being comforted herself. She'd been jealous of Guts and now she was jealous of Griffith and even though she'd changed so much her position was still the same, the body they'd cling to when the other wasn't available. For now, she'd give it a rest. For now they'd all focus on the task at hand. And then when everything returned to how it had been, before Guts left, before Griffith was captured, before they started scattering around the world, she'd make him look her way. She'd stop being invisible.

"Was this all my fault?" he asked, his head buried in her chest.  
"No," she answered. She hoped he knew it was a lie. She hoped he believed her.

By the next night, when Pippin, Gaston and Judeau returned to the little camp outside the city walls—Corkus stayed behind at a tavern, still pretending he was going to leave them—what had transpired between herself and Guts seemed like a dream, or a fantasy she'd made up in her boredom.

As they'd expected, Port Royal was bustling with activity: merchants, guards, knights, and sailors crowded its streets during the day. But word of Griffith's escape hadn't reached there yet, so they had that at their advantage. Their little vanguard hadn't garnered much information, elf-wise. But they'd seen many large ships that should resist a long deep sea voyage whose crew wouldn't offer much resistance for the likes of the Band of the Hawk, or what was left of it, rather. They relayed the information to her, interrupted only by the muffled laughter coming from Griffith's wagon. Guts was there, this was habit now.

"What should we do, Commander?"  
She scowled at the name.  
"Once we have the elf, we'll capture a useful ship. That's what's most necessary now," her sight was on the wagon, the drawn curtains. "We can't stay here very long. Who knows when the Midland troops will..."  
"Where are we to find an elf?"  
"At the Hill of Kings, in Tara," Rickert had kept quiet throughout the conversation, but suddenly opened his mouth, as if he'd remembered something he should've remembered much earlier.  
"What are you talking about?"  
"I think I've heard that too," Pippin added, rubbing his forehead.  
"The old people in town used to talk about it, where I grew up. Elves and fairies and warlocks and witches all gather at Lia Fáil, during the old year night. People in my village had gone, they'd tell tales, even if no one had seen any elves, they insisted."  
"Where is this, Rickert?"  
"At Inis Fáil, where I grew up."  
"Up north," Judeau echoed Casca's thoughts. He was always good at that.  
"So acquiring the ship comes first."  
"But, there are eight months left until the New Year," ever the realist, Gaston, standing in for Guts who might've not even noticed.  
"Inis Fáil's calendar is different. Even so, it's six months away."  
"What are we supposed to do in the meantime?"  
"There's no guarantee the elves show themselves only on that date. We could be lucky."  
"Griffith's always been lucky," Judeau said, matter-of-factly.

They all agreed, of course. They'd witnessed his luck first hand countless times before. They were sure Guts would, too. They'd all just conveniently forget the fact that for the past year he'd been helpless, locked inside a tower, out of their reach. For now they had to rely on him once more, he had to be their leader, once more.

As she did each time she caught herself thinking of it with that name, Casca chided herself for thinking it was "Griffith's feeding time" as she approached the wagon. It sounded like she was thinking of an animal, not the man with the dreams she'd fearlessly clung to all that time. Perhaps it was that, that distraction, that stopped her right before the drawn curtains, listening in to the hushed whispers inside the wagon. She recognized Guts' voice, the tone he'd used when he'd shared pieces of his past with her, not more than a week ago—it seemed like a lifetime, now. He was sharing something she didn't know, that much she could tell. She startled herself with the distinct notion that she was prying. That she wanted desperately to know, and she was being forbidden from knowing. She was being kept away.

So she turned around before she could catch another word that wasn't meant for her, and returned making as much noise as possible, until Guts drew the curtains and let her in.

The next day at dawn Guts looked electrified, his hands shaking with excitement, gripping tightly onto his sword, and a large fierce grin on his face, his mind already on the battle—even if it was just one done to take over a ship. She remembered then why she felt the way she did. The raiders followed him the way they always had, they led the vanguard, with Casca and Judeau, Pippin and Corkus—who'd leave after this, he swore—to follow later. Essentially, this was a much different job than Guts was used to with the Band of the Hawk, but as thieves, the rest of them had undertaken operations like this countless times in the past year, stealing in under the cover of night, slashing the throats of sleeping men, causing the least possible noise, calling little attention to themselves.

They'd laid the plan out to Griffith, in his wagon, that morning. He'd looked at each of them, studied their expressions, and then nodded his approval. Guts and the raiders would approach the ship by sea, on one of the launches they'd take from the harbor. Some of them'd climb on its sides to infiltrate the ballast and gun deck, make sure they were in control of those, and done away with any watchmen, before Guts and the rest entered the crew and officer's quarters. Judeau had garnered that The Hamadryad's crew were to sail the next morning, they'd be spending that night on the ship, anchored some miles into the bay. When everything had been done, Guts would signal, lighting a torch, and Casca and the others would then follow on another launch. She'd look over the stock logs, make sure there were enough provisions to last them a while without having to touch land, and then she'd talk terms with the Captain, offer to let the ones the raiders hadn't already killed go if they didn't resist, if the navigator remained on the ship, and if they didn't give word of this. Pirates weren't common round these parts, but no Captain, nor crew, would be ignorant of them. They'd understand the terms, or they'd die. They would lock the surviving members of the crew on the hold before signaling Rickert, who waited with Griffith, Sam, and Kim, to row towards the ship and board it. Pippin would help Griffith board, and they'd place him in the Captain's quarters. The anchor would be pulled up, the yard secured, the rudder would be under Judeau's watch, and they'd all work to set the sails. Griffith, of course, would protest, he'd ask without any sound to be on deck while they readied the ship, the salty air of sea breeze would sting his wounded flesh but he'd withstand it, barely notice it, and he'd keep his eyes on Guts, who'd be pulling ropes and lines and chains wearing the same expression of excitement he wore on the battlefield. Casca would see this, from afar, and if Guts caught her eye, he'd smile, but they'd both avert their gazes too fast, too soon. He wouldn't refuse, though, later, after they'd sail farther into the sea, when they were far enough that letting the surviving members of The Hamadryad's crew go in the launches was safe, when she assigned the officer's quarters to the two of them, as they'd be closer to Griffith, and it wasn't spacious enough to fit more than the two of them. The rest of them, including Corkus, would take the crew's quarters, and they'd assign shifts for a night watch on deck, someone on look out in the crow's nest, and a guard to make sure the navigator didn't try anything rash or stupid, like throwing himself overboard or burning the ship.

She didn't make use of the officer's quarters that night, though. Griffith and Guts and her spent the night in Griffith's quarters, poring over the Captain's log, the ship's previous voyages, its missions. Griffith leaned on Guts for support as they read the thick book, Guts' lips moving over each word, Griffith waiting patiently for him to finish reading before turning the page. She watched this as she read through stock logs and maps and tried to make sense of all the navigating instructions and rules and for a moment she forgot whatever it was she'd been feeling since they'd come out of that tower. For a moment she smiled at the two men in front of her and was sure everything would be alright.


	4. wishing that sometimes (sometimes)

Time here is measured in the gentle rocking of the waves. Here in The Hamadryad—what a suitable name, he thinks, and how ill suited: dead trees aren't protected by any spirit. He spends his days in his quarters reading, or on deck, carried there on Pippin's back, watching over Guts, who ambles around like a restless animal in a tight space swinging his sword like he was trying to calm down something dreadful welling up in his chest. He studies the movements of the crew, the way they adjust to life on the ship, ask Casca for her orders, her approval, and he grits his teeth, thinking of the way she feeds him, places her fingers inside his mouth and he's tempted to bite down in anger, but he can't. She's not to blame. He shifts his gaze to Guts. If only he could blame him, too. And he spends his nights opening and closing his eyes to dispel the creatures that crawl out of the interstices in the wood, the holes where it's rotted, to tell him this struggle is for nothing.

The night before they presented the plan to take over The Hamadryad to him Guts was in the wagon. The curtains had been left open so that from the inside Griffith could see a cut out of the starry sky, exceptionally clear in that part of the continent—outside the walls of an important port city he'd never visited before, far away enough from Midland for the paranoia to subside, not far enough for him to think it was coincidence. Either the princess had done something to stop the king from following them—he tried not to picture anything she might've done—or they were being given a frame of time simply by chance. However it was, that night he thought not of that but of the stars beyond the dark trees. And he pointed to a hill barely visible where he was sure he could make out a clearing—the heavy iron mask helped his eyes be covered in shadows and only when Judeau or Rickert or someone not Guts or Casca drew the curtains open wide to let the air in he had to face the sunshine which now he despised. Even the dim glow of a small bonfire near his wagon at night bothered his sensitive pupils, still used to the eternity spent locked inside the deepest recesses of his mind, that dark tower, his own hell. And so his vision at night was exceptional, the best it had ever been, and he was sure he could make out that clearing, up ahead, and he pointed to it, and from his throat sounds that resembled vowels and not much else emerged and Guts maybe understood. He had to have understood because he smiled, and rubbed Griffith's shoulder, and hoisted him up and carried him up that hill.

Surrounded by the tall grass and the accumulating dew, the small bugs he could feel creeping up his skin under his bandages—not unlike the maggots inside the tower—he watched the stars above, used Guts' presence by his side as an anchor to the present, almost as if this wasn't a delusion he'd concocted in the loneliness of his cell.

(He didn't like thinking about it or even explaining it to himself or even, even, even, brushing his thoughts close to it, at all, at all, but sometimes when the jailer was near he saw Guts' face, and he—it made things easier to bear—and this was no different, there was no difference in this delusion.)

It had been hard to breathe when the stars above them both turned into a room full of ladders going nowhere, an architecture meant for torturing the waking mind, and from their distant glow thousands of hands reached down to grab him—he tried to scream, he held onto Guts' hand—the same hand that he'd placed his on at the tower, when Guts had cried those tears, those damn tears, and when he opened his eyes there he was, a skeleton in armor atop a horse, his figure drawn from darkness and the wake of blurred stars. Perhaps when he had been a different man, when he'd been the man who faced off Zodd, who was willing to give his life for Guts in front of Zodd, he would've felt fear. Or excitement.

Guts spoke first—before Griffith could remember he had no voice of his own anymore—he'd immediately stood up and he even seemed familiar with the eerie figure, the one giving off the same feeling as Zodd, as the creatures crawling out of darkness, as the maggots gnawing at his flesh, the deadly ones. The deep, vast night swallowed them whole and yet this man, this entity, seemed darker than that, everlasting, but Guts acted as if he knew it, had seen it before.  
"What you want now?" Guts asked, growled—hiding his fear? The grip he had on his sword was so tight Griffith could almost hear it.  
The figure laughed, its skull opening and letting out sounds even though no tongue or flesh or organs were visible.  
"I see," its voice came from the depths of its body yet echoed all around the clearing, in the stars, around the trees surrounding, enveloping them, crackled like the fires lit far away, at the camp, "you're both trying to struggle, like headless worms clinging to their lives. Interesting. But you can't stop what's been put in motion. The kingly part will never let go for a promise that may not exist."  
"I don't understand what yer sayin'!" Guts said, ever direct. "Stop talkin' riddles!"

Even then Griffith had felt the urge to laugh. If only he could cling to that—whatever it was—way Guts made him feel when he asked a simple question in the face of unfathomable evil. If only he could cling to that at night when the hands of the jailer joined those of the amorphous, repulsive beings that scratched the inside of his brain and perpetually reopened his wounds.

Just like that the armored skeleton had vanished and left a wake of darkness behind that melted slowly, giving way to the distant glow of stars.  
"You okay?" Guts sat down next to him, placed the sword on the grass.  
Griffith nodded—not much else he could do—as his hand twitched at his side—that damn sword just barely out of reach—like everything else—he couldn't pick it up now, and he couldn't defeat it before Guts left, and the universe at least must've known he'd use it now if he could—take them both or everyone else out if it meant just one ounce less of pain, just the smallest sliver—  
"Where's your ah—?" Guts pointed to his own neck.  
Griffith stared at him. Sometimes he looked so innocent, and vulnerable, and his eyes looked on Griffith with questions—Why do you risk your life for me?—as if he really didn't know and it often made Griffith want to twist it into an expression of pain—one like he'd never seen or experienced before—and it often made Griffith want to softly and gently hold him the way Guts'd held him when he'd found him in that tower—that tower where he'd left him.  
He shook his head.

He knew of course Guts was asking about the behelit, but all his mind could muster were the hands of the jailer clumsily dropping it. Beyond that the memories were less fortunate. He'd worn less scars that day. He barely imagined what those hands could do then.

And so, now that he'd been woken up by another Sluagh, a cluster of disembodied heads and expressionless faces who seem to melt their flesh into each other and extend their hands towards his own melted, ruined flesh and threaten to drag him away, he remembered. The Sluagh in his dreams, crawling towards him, bearing Guts and Casca's faces. Worms can grow new heads.

He'd have dwelt longer on the imagery if not for the violent crash of waves against the hull, which seemed to threaten with toppling The Hamadryad over—capsizing, was the term—and managed to knock him off his bed with the stark and distinct crunch of one of his rib bones fracturing into small splinters—he'd have cried out if he'd been capable of fully processing the pain but it'd been too much, for too long. He stared at the waves aggressively charging against the windows of his quarters trying to break the thick opaque glass. It wasn't long until Kim, with Rickert in tow, burst through the door to his quarters.  
"S-sir! Sir!" the clear shock in his voice from seeing the leader of the Hawks lying pathetically, helplessly on the floor was enough for Griffith to wish for everyone's death, even if for a second. Mostly his own.  
"Help me!" Rickert was already holding onto Griffith's side, doing his best to hoist him up.  
Why should he, the youngest of them all, be the one supporting him, now? Why should anyone?  
Kim himself lent his shoulder, and after they'd positioned him on the large padded chair behind the Captain's desk, secured him in his place with the belts Gaston had procured, they explained the reason for the violent shaking of the ship, and the distant roaring of thunder and lightning, the tall furious waves.  
"It came outta nowhere!"  
"Guts was in the crow's nest, he's sayin' the skies were clear one second, then a storm the next, in just a blink."  
Griffith tried speaking, then. If Guts was saying this then of course he was safe and yet despite all that time his first instinct was to ask—is his life in danger?

 _Is your life in his hands still?_

"They're all followin' the navigator's instructions now—"  
At this Griffith pointed towards the entrance to his quarters, which led to the wheelhouse, from where he'd be able to see the deck.  
"It isn't safe out there, sir..."  
So he pointed harder, ignored the quiet, dull ache in his chest—his ribs—and his wounded skin and torn tendons and frowned—even if the mask hid his gaze he was sure they could tell.  
The Hamadryad had been steering slowly, probably to meet the waves face on, but one violent movement knocked almost everything sideways, his chair slipped until Kim caught it. It was probably the proximity, or the fact that he was able to look Griffith in the eye, which changed his mind.

Out in the wheelhouse there was barely cover from the storm. Seawater and rain hit his face, his skin, did away with his bandages, and soaked the thick wool blanket he wore to cover himself, but from here he could watch the movement of his band, the White Hawks as close as they could get to what they once had been. Guts and the raiders were up on the masts, two for each one, trimming the sails, and Casca and Judeau and the navigator in front of them steered to meet the tall waves head on with the bow, break it neatly down the middle with the wind on their back.

"You shouldn't be out here!" Casca came to meet him, worry on her face, and she yelled over the deafening sound of the rain and the waves and the thunder. But then she'd turned to Rickert, "We need to pump out the bilges! Come with me!"  
He'd watched them go down into the ship and, as they used to do in the battlefield, a million lifetimes ago, his eyes met Guts, and Guts, from atop the foremast and through the rain and the screaming and the waves knocking men over, looked at him and smiled.

 _Your life is still in his hands. Keep forgetting you cannot even stand on your own._

He fell over not from the movements of the ship but the uselessness of his legs when he tried to step forward, out of Kim's hold, closer to Guts. He fell with a dull thud, his face met the deck and he swallowed salty, burning water, mixed with the copper rust of his own blood. Maybe he lost consciousness for a second or maybe time just stopped for him as it had stopped in the tower—and maybe he was still there and he was daydreaming impossible things—but when he came to Guts had his arms wrapped around him, a strong hold, and Kim and Sam and two of the raiders stood around them, looking on, as the storm carried on its merciless strike.

The navigator called for those idle, but he and Guts stayed as they were, Guts rubbing his back, feeling out for broken bones until he found the one rib.

"Yer hurt, you in pain? Ya shouldn't be out here," he echoed her words and something twisted inside Griffith's chest, ached more acutely than his rib.  
He tried pushing away but there was nothing he could do. Everything was, had always been, in Guts' hands, so he settled with looking at his face, concern in every feature, and the way his broad body sheltered Griffith from the incoming waves. He reached out to cup Guts' cheek with his arm—How many times had he done that, after that first time when he'd told him 'Now you're mine', how many times had he wanted to do so and held back on account of the way he could see his dream being eclipsed behind the brightness of Guts' form and the trail of dead he'd have left for no reason.

That was when he caught sight of it, reflected on the large, wide pupils of Guts' eyes, a mountain of water emerging behind him, at starboard.

He should've known the sea would harbor monsters like those they'd encountered on land and worse. He'd read books by those traveling uncharted waters. He'd felt a repulsive and tender affinity, a sick and gleeful connection to their childish ambitions—Why couldn't you have been satisfied just thinking of those endless expanses of seawater?—and stubborn optimism, their guilty determination. He'd read those and so he knew, humans knew not what lied beneath dark waters.

But his eyes still opened wide like his mouth, still bleeding from the bite to the inside of his cheek, when the giant with the horns of a goat and the face of a fish and the body of a large bloated slug, its one giant eye positioned to one side, expressionless and vacant but, it seemed to Griffith, focused squarely on him. Guts stood up, and though he must've left his sword elsewhere, he had his dagger at the ready, pointing it towards the creature while his other hand held tightly but gently onto Griffith's waist, holding up all of his weight.

Again Griffith found himself wanting to laugh—even though he couldn't, physically, anymore—seeing Guts defy otherworldly creatures as if he had any hand on his own fate. Because of its sudden appearance the storm had quelled, an eerie static calm of nothingness took its place. The silence was such Griffith could hear the sound of Guts' breathing.

"I'm here to see the baleros. Are you it?" the creature's slimy, transparent eyelid slid over its giant eye, its voice seemed to echo on the inside of Griffith's body. He knew instinctively the question was aimed at him. Griffith looked at Guts, who shook his head.  
"He ain't!"  
"I expected different of The Deadly One than to take the form of a human," with that it seemed the creature's assessment was done, and it had sunk back into the sea, leaving behind it nothing but the still of the night.

Guts was still holding him—holding him together—but he felt the panicked dread of bile rising in his throat, the one he felt in the worst moments during that monstrous year. How many times had he faced entities such as this and come unscathed? Guts said it was the behelit which made Zodd spare their lives in the battlefield, and before he was defeated by Guts and Zodd himself, Wyald had ordered him to "summon them, our masters", and that night, the skeleton had, in its cryptic way, signaled him too. Even though all of them could've killed him, none of them did, as if they feared him more than he could ever fear them. Than he could fear Guts finding he was different. Even when the underhanded assassinations and court games played in Midland failed to turn him into a repulsive being in Guts' eyes, now this would do it. Now he'd leave for good.

He turned to look at Guts, confront whatever expression he wore on his face after once again hearing there was something wholly different—repulsive—about him. But, as he'd learned during the years spent by his side, Guts was unpredictable, and all he looked was concerned.  
"Y'alright?" he sounded frantic even, Griffith recognized the tone in the way he felt when Guts risked his own life. "Should take ya to bed, for rest."  
Griffith nodded, let Guts wrap his arms around him, around the thick soaking blanket, and carry him back into his quarters under the watchful eyes of Casca, who'd emerged from the inside of the ship at some point after the creature's appearance.

Gently as ever, Guts removed the bandages off his skin, washed it clean of the sting of seawater with a wet cloth, smiled every now and then at him as if he hadn't just tried to square off with some underwater monster. He traced his fingers over Griffith's exposed chest, his scarred skin, feeling for the broken rib with knotted eyebrows.  
"We have to bandage that better, gotta ask Emil for a cast later on, huh?"  
Guts' touch burned so Griffith put his hand on Guts' and looked him in the eye. It must've been that, the simple action, that made him swallow hard—Griffith could hear him gulp—and avert his gaze, then break contact, moving over to where they kept the clean bandages.  
"That was some shit, right? I ain't seen anything like that ever before," he scratched the back of his head, turned away from Griffith who lie on his bed. "Guess we should get used to it, right?" Griffith liked the way he said 'we.' "Considerin', ya know, where we're goin'?"

That's right. Where they're going. Maybe Guts'll finally see him when they reach that place, and he won't want to leave again, they'll stand at each other's side on equal footing, Guts won't have to hold him up anymore. Maybe it'll be worth it, all of it, then, throwing away his dream for this one man to finally see him.

So he smiled, and he nodded as best he could. Maybe.


	5. gets you when you're down

Half the men spent the first few days throwing up every single thing they consumed, including the water, their guts clenching as they asked for help and nothing but bile came forth. Most of them had never even seen the sea before and now they were manning a full ship, waging their hopes on Griffith's life again. Guts spent that time feeling trapped, unaccustomed to the tight confines of a wooden ship where swinging his sword became all but useless, his purpose in life reduced, once more, to standing in the shadows of Griffith's burning light, the all consuming fire that'd wipe him away if he wasn't careful. The moments in which he wasn't idle, plagued by the thoughts that despite what he'd initially thought when he agreed to embark on this journey to whatever island there might be where they could help Griffith become Griffith again, were spent learning what needed to be done. Growing used to the soft rhythm of rope against wood, the melody of the sea at night, the voices of the small torches lit on deck, and the sweet howling of the wind, always just a push away from turning against them, but friendly if they knew how to position the sails, flapping just barely with their muted noise. It was nothing like the sound of battle. Except that one moment just before twilight when he was on the crow's nest, looking out on the horizon, and he felt his senses sharpening, and he could hear nothing but his breathing—no wind and no waves and no voices and no ropes and no wood—just like when during battle, right before the apex was reached and they could tell who was to be the victor, he didn't hear anything but the beating of his heart—no horses and no screaming and no metal clashing against metal and no crunching of dirt beneath heavy boots—so maybe things hadn't changed much. Maybe he hadn't lost everything, yet. Not as long as Griffith still held chances for recovery and things could go back to the way they were.

There was only one perturbing thought that refused to leave his side, especially right before that moment of silence helped him focus like he did on the battlefield. It was gone quickly but back the next day and the next and the next. It had, after all, been with him since both him and Griffith had fought Zodd. Maybe even before.

After the sea monster—which Rickert claimed was called Fomhóraigh in the legends of the fishermen in his island—had uttered such words, and even though he'd denied them and would stand firm in the belief that they weren't true, that Griffith was no whatever that thing had called him, the thought lingered around him, whispering "It's not just luck that's carried him here."

As he gently dipped the cloth in sweet water and dabbed at Griffith's skin, trying not to disturb the barely healed wounds and do away with the sea salt, his mind mulled over the thought and he clenched his teeth to keep it at bay. Once Guts had Griffith's body washed he smiled softly and placed his fingers on Griffith's chest. The smile was asking for permission because, sure the Griffith before wouldn't have minded and the Guts before wouldn't have asked permission to pat him on the back or ruffle his hair or place his hand on his chest but they weren't those people anymore, not yet. But they would be. He felt the muscle and the ribs under the paper-thin skin—he was so underweight Guts could feel the strings of fiber and ripped tendons and the third rib on the left side cracked and splintered. He traced his fingers over the scars, his brow furrowing, who'd have let this happen if his luck was something more than just that? How would someone monsters like Zodd or the Skull Knight seemed to respect suffer through this if he was that, after all, if he was more than a man? Not any man, sure, and bigger and brighter and wholly better than any other human, but fragile, still, who bled red and could die and could be lost to Guts forever.  
"We have to bandage that better, gotta ask Emil for a cast, huh?"  
He kept his hand on Griffith's skin and smiled again. He'd fix this, it would be as it had been before.  
But then Griffith placed his own hand on Guts' and Guts' stomach dropped to his knees, making them weak, his throat and mouth went dry, and when he swallowed he swore even the fish could hear him. Griffith's hand on his burned like embers, he remembered how cold the storm outside had been from the contrast, how warm it was here, just the two of them.

This hadn't changed at all. Except it had. Or it should've. Casca's eyes when she looked at them as they left the deck just moments earlier were the reminder.

At night they'd share the officer's quarters and in the middle of the night if neither of them were on lookout duty her hand would look for his under the covers and he'd let her. That had been it, for the most part, and a kiss here and there that tasted bitter and sour and guilty. They hadn't been on the ship that long and he was in the crow's nest often and if not there in Griffith's room, clumsily reading the former Captain's logs, slowly draining the ship's provision of alcohol. But it should've changed. So he broke contact with Griffith and pretended he didn't see that expression shadowed by Griffith's helmet and he turned to find a change of bandages scratching the back of his head. This had to go back to how it was too, didn't it?

"That was some shit, right? I ain't seen anything like that ever before. Guess we should get used to it, right? Considerin', ya know, where we're goin'?"  
When he turned back around ready to face the expression he thought might linger on Griffith's face he was met with a sincere smile, so beautiful and radiant he almost forgot Griffith was the way he was now, he almost forgot not to smile back the same way himself.  
"Ya remember that time ya got me all wet by the well when you were bathin'?"  
Griffith chuckled, he let out the air through his nose the way he did right before he broke out in full laughter, and nodded again. That was the smile he'd been reminded of, that was who he'd seen just before, the radiant, larger than life person who'd told him he'd get his own kingdom and Guts would have a place there by his side and had made Guts believe him in spite of himself.  
"Cocky bastard," he mumbled audibly while wrapping Griffith's limbs in bandages carefully, looking back up at Griffith's face every time he needed to reposition the leg or the arm or his body with a soft smile that asked permission. It must've been something in it that reminded him of that time, in prison, or just the general feeling of entering a realm that's not quite human, not quite what he's always known. After all, if the navigator wasn't lying to them and he better not be they were nearing the island Rickert had been born in, the island where they might find faeries.  
"Sum time before I joined yous—before ya found me," he corrected, avoiding Griffith's eyes as he did, "I spent a night in the cell of some castle. They didn't feed me so I—" He vividly remembered eating that rat alive but kept some details to himself, like the window overlooking the flower field that let the moonlight in, because he knew Griffith's prison had no such luxuries. "so I'unno if it was real or not but..." he paused here because he'd finished changing the bandages, he patted Griffith just above the knee and turned to grab a new blanket—the wet one he'd propped up to dry—to cover Griffith with on the bed. A shiver ran down his spine as he remembered how cold he'd been that night so long ago, and another shiver ran down even more pronounced when Griffith looked him straight in the eye as Guts placed the blanket on him, pleading with them for Guts to continue the story. He wasn't good at that, telling stories. Griffith was, had always been, but then again Guts was good at doing what Griffith wanted him to do, "Just order me," he'd say if this were a different time. At least now this was his choice.  
"Scoot over," he said and settled himself on the bed next to Griffith, this was habit by now. "Well, I saw a fairy, I think."  
Griffith watched him with interest, wrapped up in the blanket, his back propped up on the pillows Guts had positioned behind him.  
"She, it, y'know, said to call her Chitch, said she was a spirit of the flower or sumthin'. Y'know even then I wasn't sure it was real, thought I was hallucinatin', but—" He hesitated and in doing so realized his voice had gone softer, much softer, and it threatened to break. Griffith was still watching him but he slowly gathered what Guts figured was all his strength to pose his right hand on Guts' left shoulder, as if he was—as if Griffith who looked so weak and broken and beyond repair—was trying to give Guts strength. Things never change, even now all Guts did was depend on him. "She was just lonely, I guess, weak and soft-hearted, y'know. I thought it was 'cos I was... lonely, that she was me, as a kid, lookin' for people who'd—who'd make me feel like puttin' my life on the line was worth it," at this he looked away, through the large windows out onto the still after-storm sea, because he'd only ever realized Griffith, Griffith and the others, were those people after he'd already been gone for a whole year, after he'd already thrown them away, after Griffith had been locked inside a tower for just as long, stripped of everything, even the skin on his back. "I was banged up pretty bad from battle and hungry and cold but I talked to 'er and she I'unno did somethin', healed me I guess. The next day I wasn't feelin' so bad but she was gone, her flower was gone too, well, withered, 'cos she used it up helpin' me. I'd promised her I'd take her to some flower field nearby, so she wouldn't be alone, y'know, I thought it was terribly important to keep my promise, even if she was just a hallucination, cos it was like—"

He stopped because Griffith posed his head on his shoulder now, and it must've taken him no small amount of effort, but, most of all, because it didn't feel wrong or unwanted or anything of the sort. It made Guts feel whole. He swallowed hard, again, then chuckled softly, then, after a moment's consideration, put his hand on Griffith's arm, on its shape beneath the blanket, and cupped it gently. Griffith didn't need to speak at all, now or before, for Guts to know he understood. He knew what Guts meant and he was saving Guts the words. If only Guts himself had known this earlier—before all this happened.

"But y'know, if it was real then it means—"  
Griffith nodded slowly against his shoulder. Again there was no need to say it, Griffith knew, it meant he could be healed too, things would be the same once more. Their soon would come. It'd be real.

If they got the ship to move, that is.

Casca chose that precise moment to come into the room, Judeau in tow, and stupidly, because he felt like he'd been caught stealing something, Guts was startled, let go of Griffith's arm, uncrossed his legs lying on the bed too close to its edge, and almost fell off it. It would all have been worth it if only for Griffith's face of childish mockery behind the mask and if not for the fact that instead of smiling Casca just seemed even more irritated at him.

"Is Griffith okay?" Griffith nodded himself and she continued immediately. "We got ourselves becalmed," she said, expecting them to know what she meant surely. Griffith probably did, though.  
"Whassat?"  
"No wind on the sails," Judeau supplied. "Or anywhere. We've hove to and haven't moved an inch since the uh storm broke."  
"The navigator says it could be days before we get wind. Weeks, even"  
"Weeks? Can't he fix it?" Guts said and also whispered 'hove to' to himself in confusion. It was crazy how fast they all adapted to life as sailors as if it was all they'd known.  
"It ain't that easy."  
"Thought we was supposed to go on land soon, stock up on supplies."  
"We got enough to last us a couple weeks," Casca said, she was the one in charge of that after all. "But we should put into a port soon as we can get outta here."  
"What are we gonna do then?"  
"The navigator says it's a good a time as any to give the crew some rest. Let'em swim if they want. The storm was rough, there're some repairs to be done so some of the men are on it. But the sun's coming up so we're thinking just letting them rest today, drink some, eat well."  
Griffith agreed, Guts could tell from the way he looked, which relaxed Guts too.  
"Sounds good, right? Like back then, after a battle," he said to Griffith, who nodded.  
"You should let Griffith rest too."  
"Huh?"  
"Come with me," she grabbed him by the hand, pulled him off the bed, and dragged him out of the room before he could even register what was going on. Behind them he heard Judeau saying "Some things never change," and Guts imagined he was shrugging his shoulders and Griffith still wore that confused look on his face.

They stepped out onto the deck and Guts witnessed firsthand what the lack of wind felt like, the air static but humid, dense and sluggish.  
"Whas the matter?"  
She stepped closer to him and rested her head on his chest. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around her.  
"Is he okay? Is he really gonna be okay?"  
Suddenly her expression back in Griffith's room made more sense. It wasn't anger he'd shown them, him, it was apprehension and fear. As usual they'd made her carry everything on her shoulders and she'd done it all on her own. At least he could recognize himself in that, never asking for help until there was no way out. He showed her to one of the wooden boxes lining the edges of the deck and sat her down then sat next to her. The sun was coming up behind them, slowly illuminating her tired face.  
"It'll be alright, promise. Just like it was before—before this whole thing happened."  
Casca looked at him intently for too long so he wondered what it was but didn't ask and only waited for her to speak.  
"Is that what you want?"  
"Huh?"  
"Things to go back to how they were?"  
"Of course," he said, sure of himself. What else would he want?  
She looked away from him, to the horizon on the other side of the ship, and nodded but didn't say anything or look back at him until a while later.  
"I'll go rest now. Judeau should be down in the stores getting supplies. Go help him. Kim and Rickert'll cook it later, leave it in the galley for them."  
"Uh, sure. Gotta find Emil first."  
She nodded again.  
"See ya later?"  
"Yeah."

* * *

One of the raiders was yelling down at Corkus and his buddies who had lowered the small launch to the sea in order to have a swim when Guts walked by him on the deck. Guts was coming from the galley where the nice smell had made him too hungry to hang around. Most of the crew was starting to gather on deck, ready for the feast, too, so he'd be better off there than getting nagged at by Rickert.  
"Hope the wind picks up so we can leave yous all here!" the raider was yelling down over the ship's edge.  
"Suck it, just cos you ain't know how to swim."

The words of the swimmers came up clear and Guts even felt like laughing. The sun was at its highest point in the clear blue sky, the waves were so gentle he barely felt any movement. This couldn't last longer than two days, he could already see himself losing his mind.

He found Pippin's on Griffith's room, tasked with the duty of carrying Griffith so he could join in. He couldn't really tell why but he wanted to be the one to carry him but didn't say anything when Pippin gently offered his back to Griffith. Guts only spoke up to address Emil.  
"Why isn't he got a cast?"  
"Can't do that for ribs, man. Just gotta take it easy. Ribs heal on their own."  
"Why'd ya put me in a cast that one time?"  
Emil let out a laugh, even Pippin seemed to be in on some sort of joke.  
"Thought it'd be funny, big guy with the body cast."  
"Yer kiddin'? I'll kill you."  
"After we get to eat."

Once they were back on deck he found more of the men had arrived, and Casca had left the room they shared. If any of them saw what he saw—the sun shining through Griffith's bandages, hitting pale, thin skin and he looked too light too transparent made of another matter—they all pretended as if they hadn't, laughing at the fumbled attempts of Riguel to climb back onto The Hamadryad while loudly asking the others not to laugh. He'd pretend too, then, and helped Griffith off Pippin's back and onto the makeshift seats.

"Where's the booze? Heard Commander Guts was sharin' with us today," Nikol said.  
Guts vaguely wondered what ever happened to the girl who rejected his proposal.  
"It's comin', it's comin'," Rickert answered, carrying a large tray with food, followed by Kim who carried as much or more.  
"How kind of 'Commander' Guts to share with us, huh?" Corkus said, climbing onto the ship, his hair and long johns wet with seawater, his tone mocking. "He only gets to monopolize it cos he's the favor—iiieeee"  
Nikol cut him off by pushing him back into the water below.  
"That's dangerous!" the navigator warned him, not that they'd listen.  
The men all laughed loudly, even Corkus's.  
"Ah, he'll be fine!" and more laughter.

Guts looked at Griffith. He seemed to be having fun. As long as they could still laugh like this it'd all be okay. It could only get better.

The bottles were brought out not long after they'd started digging into the food. Guts himself left Griffith's side for a couple minutes to go retrieve boxes below deck, then sat down and watched the men open bottles amidst smiles and laughter. Gaston poured a jug for him and one for Griffith and he held Griffith's head by the nape as delicately as possible to help him drink a couple sips before Griffith signaled he didn't want more with attempts at coughing so—something that Guts struggled to find a description better than pathetic and came up short. He finished it off himself then used the empty jug to toast with the men who came over to celebrate Griffith's return, toast to their journey, their good luck, the Band of the Hawk.

He'd been listening to Gaston's tales from the few months he managed the tailoring shop on one of Midland's high streets, watching Griffith listen to the tales with curiosity and attention, and wondering if Gaston had ever before spoken to Griffith, at all, and so honestly, and feeling warmth at the renewed knowledge that he was somewhere he belonged, that he'd be a moron to let go of it basically all afternoon. So he'd been too distracted to notice the light of day fading into night, but Casca pointed it out by quietly lighting the torches and oil lamps that hung from hooks on the masts around the deck. Because she did, Guts could see her face, serenity written on her features, and he felt a worrisome edge he was barely aware of ease a bit. By coincidence or not he noticed Griffith was watching him watch Casca, Griffith's gaze alternating between her and him, and for a second or less he panicked. And because he panicked he realized what should have probably been obvious to him. But then again he'd never been too bright. He wanted to groan. He wasn't looking forward to speaking to Griffith about it, which wasn't really the reason he hadn't done so yet—even if he told himself now it was—it just really hadn't crossed his mind. She rarely did when it was the two of them. Nothing else did.


	6. keeping it in the back

Felt like they've been stuck for longer than they have.

It had been eight days, Casca'd been keeping count.

It was all there was left for anyone to do really at this point, count the passing days in the hopes that tomorrow would come more quickly, the winds would return to fill the Hamadryad's sails, rescue them from where they remained stranded.

The day prior, when the alcohol ran out, the navigator had let out a long sigh, covering his eyes from the sun as he watched the skies.  
"What is it?" Casca'd asked.  
The language difference—though he understood and spoke perfectly—had made it so that he didn't speak much, kept to himself possibly in the hopes of not getting thrown overboard by the violent thieves who'd kidnapped him. Casca couldn't care about it.  
He looked at her with an odd sort of expression.  
"They'll grow restless without alcohol," and then after a long moment of silence. "He can turn this around."  
Instinctively she knew the navigator meant Griffith, that it was in Griffith's hands to rescue them, to make the winds return.  
"The monster talked to him. He can call it again."  
"He can't."

Guts had been blocking her view but Casca had still caught a glimpse of Griffith's confusion when Wyald demanded he summon something not long after they rescued Griffith. Even if the monster or whatever else would call forth the winds if Griffith asked, Griffith didn't know how to. And Casca was sure he wouldn't want to ask for monstrous help anymore. If she could help it, she wouldn't let him either. Neither would Guts.

But the navigator was right. Fights had already started breaking out. Casca had had to lock two men up, separately, to get them to stop beating each other to death over a bottle of water which lie in pieces on the floor, and had had to tie another one to the mast, to send a message that stealing food from the other members of the Band was a crime—Judeau had convinced her that cutting off his hands would do no good for now. And Guts had taken up practically permanent residence up in the crow's nest when he wasn't keeping Griffith company, as if he were avoiding her. He was. She couldn't afford to care about that for now, either. It was driving her slowly mad, she too was in the same ship, experiencing the same effects the sluggish, slowed down movements in impossibly hot, humid weather and no wind, had on the rest of them.

Only when the second day of their party was dying down had Guts attempted to give some sort of warning regarding what was to become of his behavior but she hadn't understood until days later, and by then the rest of the Band, the crew, had already grown more and more erratic.

He'd followed her out of Griffith's room, where the two of them had helped him get in bed, and though he'd taken her hand in his he'd hesitated, looked down at his feet, and cleared his throat.  
"Can't," he'd mumbled, even after going through the effort of clearing his throat. He'd then let his fingers slip away from hers, his hand returning to his side.  
There was an ugly, sharp twist in Casca's chest.  
"I think we gotta tell 'im."  
It turned into hollow desperation.

There was nothing Casca was more certain of than the fact that it would crush Griffith to hear. And to hear it coming from Guts.

While she helped him eat, her fingers in his mouth, her face close to his, she'd come to suspect very firmly that he already knew. There was something about the way he looked at her when her eyes trailed after Guts who left the room for Griffith's meals. The way he'd lock onto her eyes with gaze so piercing she felt guilty of ever having thought even for a second they could leave him behind. Or telling Guts he should leave them.

"You can't," she'd said, managed to sound composed.  
Guts looked at her confused—why was he always so slow when it came to these things, she wanted to slam her fists against his chest.  
"Can't tell 'im! I toldja already... Griffith... I toldja, before you had to fight those hundred men—he—" why was she the one who had to spell this out, why should she care, and why couldn't she just forget. That time, when Guts had rescued her from drowning in the river, she'd demanded he not be selfish, that he not let Griffith's feelings for him be Griffith's demise. He had done it anyway, of course. Guts had left and where was Griffith now? She wished she didn't have to tell herself the same thing now, not to be selfish, not to let Griffith's dream go to waste just so she and Guts could have something Casca knew Guts didn't want, even if he didn't know it himself, a quiet house outside the city, far away from the war, a fireplace, children running in the yard.  
"He can't survive on dreams alone," she said. "You've seen it now, it wasn't enough to keep him together after you—after you—"  
"You said it wasn't my fault," Guts looked betrayed.  
Casca's hollowness was finally gone. Now the pain was full, intense, but not of despair, it had reason. She didn't want to be the one offering her comfort now. It'd always been so, their relationship had been doomed to this since she'd had to warm his body against her will, for Griffith.  
"I lied."

She couldn't say more because Guts had left her then and she didn't have the strength to go after him. She'd climbed in bed and slept of exhaustion, without any rest, until the next morning, when she'd gone to the deck to find everyone ready to continue the celebrations, Guts along with them, by Griffith's side, never once looking her way.

It seemed to her now that those almost three days of partying, of pretending things were good for them, swimming in the ocean—she didn't because she never learned how to and she was afraid—and toasting for the island they'd surely reach in no time, the places they'd go afterwards, once Griffith was back at the helm, the head of the Band of the Hawks, were long gone. Or had never actually happened, nothing more than a mirage, coming to tempt her as she starved and thirsted in the desert.

"Feels like we been here longer than eight days, huh?" she said, her back to Griffith as she placed the dishes with his food on the large table that used to serve as a desk.  
She tried keeping her conversation bound to the time before and after feeding. Not much of a conversation when one has their fingers inside the other's mouth, tongue cut off or not.

Only two days ago had she started thinking about Griffith's wounds without holding back. She'd been too scared to utter the words out loud, couldn't even bring herself to form thoughts regarding them. They all danced circles around giving a name to what ailed him, to what had happened, so wide it was almost as if none of them could even see it, see the consequences. It was as Guts had said that day right after the sea slug showed up, him, and the rest of them, were all just waiting for this whole thing to be erased. They weren't going to find the Elf King to help Griffith heal, they were going there so they'd all forget the year after Guts left and Griffith was captured ever happened. She was doing the same.  
But it had happened.  
Guts had left.  
Griffith had been captured.  
She had led the Band of the Hawks as a group of thieves.  
And there was a large chance the Elf King didn't exist. Or he wouldn't help them. Or they'd die before ever reaching that damn island, stranded where they were, forced to eat each other's flesh once the food and the water finally ran out, and then what good would it do them to never have even thought of the fact that Griffith's tongue had been cut off with so many words.

"I hope we get out of here soon," she said turning, carrying the first dish closer to him, so she could feed him.

Griffith watched her so closely when they did this. A couple of times her hand had wavered, she'd smiled nervously, bit her lip, and his expression didn't change.

He'd taken to wearing the mask all the time but she removed it before feeding him. There was nothing between their faces, nothing obscuring the intensity of his stare.

She'd feed him in silence and then when they were finished she'd remain in her chair, Griffith in his, she'd say a couple more words—nothing of importance—and she'd leave. For some reason she thought it terribly crucial not to make of that moment one for bonding or words that held too much weight, too much meaning. She'd allotted different times for that, even if she had to leave the room and come back later.  
She didn't want to do that now.

"The navigator says they'll get restless now, without alcohol," she got the second dish, a bowl of lukewarm vegetable broth set in oily liquid. They'd been rationing all the food, especially the meat, saving it only for breakfast. "The seagull that landed on the forecastle that day of the party, remember, the one they were all so happy about?"

Griffith nodded. Guts had laughed at the seagull, said it looked like it was dancing. Casca had found herself sharing a look with Griffith like they'd both seen the same thing that'd made them happy. She hadn't felt that way, connected to Griffith, en synch with his thoughts, for a long time. Since Guts came along, at least.

"Corkus and Riguel killed it this morning."  
Griffith's expression didn't change.  
"They didn't even wait to cook it, bit into it raw, feathers and all."

Casca had stood there watching them, unable to move, as they tore the seagulls wings from its body, ripped off his legs an sucked on the meat that clung to them.

"There was no need, I told 'em. They'll have a piece of chicken tomorrow, we'll kill the last one. But it wasn't the hunger, they said. They was just bored."  
Her hand trembled, she didn't spill the broth over Griffith by sheer luck. The hand that held the bowl became unsteady too.  
"The navigator says you can stop this."  
Griffith kept his eyes on hers, watching her through and through.  
"He says you can make them bring the wind back—"  
Griffith tried to calm her hand, the one holding onto the bowl, he tried to pose his hand—weak and worn—on hers for comfort and ended up knocking the bowl over, shattering it against the cabin's wooden floor, the broth spilling, quickly sucked in by the old planks, and the vegetables rolling under the table, under their chairs along with the thousand shards of dark ceramic.

It was only a second. Griffith's eyes were on hers, his sharp expression boring into her, the bowl on the floor, and the next second his eyes were rounded, soft, he'd opened his mouth and tried to speak.

He tried to help her, Casca thought as she stood up quickly to pick up the broken pieces. He wouldn't have done that on purpose.  
Sounds came from his mouth and she understood it meant he was sorry. She looked up at him with a smile.  
They couldn't afford to waste the vegetables so she picked them up carefully, with a mind to wash them later, tell Rickert to eat them himself, he was still growing after all.

"I'll go get another plate," she explained, having gathered everything, but Griffith shook his head.  
"You need to eat."  
He shook his head again, looked at her in a way that left no room for arguing. Then he looked at his mask and she felt herself nod before she was even aware of it.

She placed the rescued vegetables on the empty first dish and helped Griffith back inside his helmet.

"I'll be back later," she told him.

It wasn't until after she'd scolded Rickert because he refused to eat the vegetables even though his stomach was growling that she realized what she'd done. What she'd said to Griffith.

Again, a sharp, cold thing twisted in her chest.

Griffith wouldn't have slapped the bowl out of her hand on purpose, he was trying to offer his support as he always had, but wouldn't he have been justified to do so? After what she'd said? After she'd implied he had the power to summon that monster, to command it. After she herself had told the navigator it wasn't something that could be done, or even thought of.

She found Guts at the foot of the foremast, practicing the swing of his sword, the adoring eyes of his raiders surrounding him in awe as they too pretended they practiced. At least Guts' simple minded discipline kept some of the crew under reins.

He was still making a show of ignoring her, and Casca was still sure she couldn't afford to care about it enough to let it sting as much as it did in places she'd forgotten could sting that much even. What happened earlier, though, helped her make up her mind.

She'd been right in telling Guts they couldn't let Griffith know. They couldn't confirm what she was sure he already knew. And it definitely couldn't be Guts who opened his mouth and let it out.

"I need to talk to you."  
Guts didn't stop his swing, he saw it through, then slowly turned to her.  
"Later?" he asked. He was still very much the child who'd follow her commands if she intoned her voice with the right inflection.  
"It's urgent."  
A couple of the raiders—those who precisely knew Guts least—let out a woot, which Guts arched his eyebrow to.

They hadn't exactly made it a secret, yet at the same time they hadn't told anyone. Only Judeau had approached her once about it, said he was happy for her, that Guts was a good man, that it was good for the both of them to be together. Guts had revealed one night, maybe their second or third on the ship, that Judeau had urged him to leave with Casca right after Griffith was rescued, before he brought up the Elf thing. No one else asked and no one else mentioned it but she suspected more than enough must've known something. She appreciated their silence as it served for the words to stay away from Griffith's reach.

Casca led Guts to the hold, where the remaining supplies were guarded protectively by Kim. He and Rickert took turns to avoid any theft.  
"You can go on deck," she told Kim. "We'll be here for now. I'll call you back later."  
He nodded his thanks but took his time walking up, there wasn't much to see there either, and he'd heard about the seagull, he wasn't looking forward to meeting some of the men.

Guts looked grouchy and out of place, enough to make her want to laugh. Even when they used to be enemies, rivals for Griffith's attention, she never felt this kind of strain in their relationship, Guts reluctantly agreeing to speak with her not out of anger or irritation but almost fear and apprehension. She blamed the fact that they were stranded in body and soul.

If she didn't start speaking, she knew, Guts would let time pass them by in silence as long as it took, he'd lose his patience but wouldn't push. He was better at leaving. She still took her sweet time, watched him not watch her, stare at his feet, clench his jaw.

"You shouldn't tell him."  
"Hm?" Guts looked at her in surprise.  
"There's nothing to tell, after all."

She couldn't decipher his expression then. Maybe it was relief. Maybe it was pain. She didn't want to care, at this point. She couldn't really expect him to look at her if whatever there was between him and Griffith wasn't resolved. And between her and Griffith too but she didn't want to think about that because thinking of it was a hollow feeling that threatened to push her over the edge of a cliff an endless fall she'd never return from.

If Griffith was there between the two of them without even knowing he was and without them speaking his name or admitting to the other that he was, each and every moment, he'd never look at her the way she wanted him to. She'd never look at him the way she wanted to.

"Wha d'you mean?"  
"Wha would you tell 'im? There's nothing there."  
"But you and I..."  
"I toldja that time too, didn't I? That it was your fault, that you'd made Griffith weak, that you took everything from him, that he's no good without you. You said you didn't believe me, but the other day when I toldja I lied you looked like you did."  
Guts swallowed hard. He wasn't looking at her anymore. He never had.  
"I was sure then that my feelin's for you weren't lies but—I dunno that you were so sure—"  
"I w—"  
"Lemme talk. I toldja lickin' each other's wounds was enough. But it wasn't. You feel it too, I'm sure. You felt it even in that tower, with the promise of seein' Griffith again so soon."  
He didn't say anything. Maybe he waited for her to continue, maybe he didn't want to admit to any of what she'd said, maybe he didn't even know what kind of feelings he held or why.  
"We can't do this, anythin' till—"  
"Till?" his voice was rough, came out in a hiss, unintentionally hoarse and curt.  
"Till you know what you feelin'. Till you're sure what Griffith is to you."  
"He's my—my—"  
She watched him struggle with the words, then placed a hand on his shoulder.  
"Don't talk to 'im about things till you know for sure. For all of us."

He placed his hand on top of hers. His eyes looked glazed over, shining. She'd only ever seen her like that once, back in the clearing in the woods when they licked each other's wounds and pretended time had stopped for them, pretended that was enough for people like them. She'd only seen him cry that time, didn't want to repeat the experience, even if he wouldn't now, she still spoke, letting her touch on Guts' shoulder go and turning away.

"Go back on deck. Tell Kim he can come back here in an hour. I'll guard this place.

Guts stayed there a while longer, probably having no idea what to say, maybe even trying to extend a hand towards her, a word of comfort, but immoveable, stuck. Even if she couldn't see him with her back turned to him she pictured his quiet confusion, his gentle straightforward concern, and kept her back straight, strong.

Once he left she allowed herself a couple tears then assumed her post as guard, heard the last of the chickens peck at corn, and imagined she could hear a faint breeze howling through the creaking of the wood.


	7. never been known to fail

His lips are chapped and torn, cut open by the dry still air. Old wounds have reopened from exertion and dehydration and when he blinks he can feel his eyelids sticking to his eyeball, dry and chafing.

He sits on the deck covered on days old bandages that can't be changed anymore—there's no replacement—and have gotten stuck to the soft raw flesh of his reopened wounds, his sun burnt paper thin skin.

He's gone through long stretches being denied of water, watching from his spot on the dirty floor how the jailer drank from a pitcher made of clay, his eyes on the water that trickled down the corner of the jailer's mouth, and he imagined—death. Empty and cold and nothing like that.

But even there in the tower he could lick the stale water that trickled down, fell on puddles around him, sometimes on his own flesh. And the jailer would give him clean fresh water when he could no longer survive and call himself merciful and call himself kind.

The members of the Band of the Hawk may have known despair and hunger before they joined him, years ago, and he did his best to keep them well, but Griffith's sure none of them have known thirst the way it's settled among them now.

He can't measure time anymore but he knows it's been some days since Olin was stabbed in his sleep in the eye and the mouth by Braid in the crew's quarters in the middle of the night. Rickert called Guts, up in the crow's nest, and Casca came to get him, and he'd wanted to look away from all of it, especially the look on her face that reminded him she knew, she knew he was the one at fault. That if he just called, this'd all change. She believed that. He knew she wasn't the only one.

Braid had said Olin had been hiding bottles of water and wouldn't share. They searched the ship but couldn't find anything to prove his claims. It seemed unlikely too since Olin's skin, like everyone else's had looked cracked, his cheeks sunken, his eyes dry, right before his death. Pippin said he'd heard of people going mad from dehydration. Up on deck, Braid restrained by blood stained ropes—there was blood all over his clothes—they all exchanged meaningful glances. They used their voices. Griffith could do nothing but watch Guts watch him, then nod at Guts' eyes full of question, and realize Guts understood something Griffith himself was barely grazing against. And then he'd watched Guts draw his dagger, whisper some words into Braid's ear, and calmly slit his throat while the rest of the band looked on in a silence that seemed surprised but should've been expected. Pippin and Guts threw both bodies overboard.

That night, or day, or moment outside of time, Griffith had lied on the middle of the deck, the navigator wearing the jailer's face telling the Band of the Hawk that Griffith and only Griffith could call upon the gods to end their suffering, blow winds on their sails that'd lead them to paradise. And he'd crawled on the dry wooden floor, his nails bleeding from the effort of using the last shreds of strength he didn't have, towards Guts, begging Guts for his help without a voice, watching Guts drink the water that ran down Casca's mouth while she drank from a large crystal bottle and laughed at him. When he'd finally gotten to where they were he'd gathered his strength to push at her, and she'd fallen to the ground and cracked in a million pieces just like the bowl had that time in his room and her eyes had rolled through the deck and been picked at by two seagulls and Griffith had tried to scream or say something but he had no voice and Guts had turned to him with an empty look on his face and asked why, why, why, and then he'd woken up, not sweating because he was too thirsty for that. In his sleep he'd been picking at scabs and the sheets were stained with dark blood.

He wishes he could curl up in on himself, but his ribs won't even allow that, so he just sits on the deck wrapped in the bandages and the blanket and waits for Guts to make his way towards him.

"Hey," he says, his throat dry, his skin dark, no longer golden brown, peeling off in the back of his neck, his shoulders, around his lips. Guts sits by his side and Griffith struggles not to lean on him. He slowly forces his hand to reach up, touch the open wounds on Guts' lips, drink in the look of surprise and confusion and warm tenderness that Guts has the gall to offer him.

How could he leave you when you needed to—

Griffith knows something must've happened, somewhere in time, because what he'd seen between Casca and Guts—the way she cleaned his blood and he let her and their whispered words and their lingering glances—disappeared along with the wind, vanished from the stances of their bodies, and they now stay clear of each other. He doesn't have a voice with which to ask, watches them intently, and curses the fate that had brought the three of them where they were. Hates and loves the day he laid eyes on Guts and asked her to keep him warm when it should've been—

"You okay?" Guts says, holding Griffith's gaze and his hand, the fingertips of which are still delicately posed on Guts' dry lips. He doesn't move the hand from where it is, just holds it in place. Maybe he's aware of how much effort it takes Griffith to just keep it there, raised.

Griffith nods.

If they die here at least he'll be with him.

He can feel the navigator's eyes on them, on him, he knows what the man thinks, he knows he's been poisoning the thoughts of those who've followed him this far, he knows it'd take just one word from him, from her, to have them turn against him, to have them ask the questions he doesn't dare ask himself. But he doesn't want to turn, let go of Guts' gaze, just to make sure the navigator knows he knows. To make sure the navigator knows he'll pay.

It's Guts who breaks contact. He too must feel the looks cast on them, not by one man anymore now, by all those present on deck. He too must feel the ominous way they close in on them, circle them with hesitating slow steps, drop to their feet propped up against the masts, regard them with curiosity and thinly veiled disgust. Griffith feels their gazes crawling under his skin like maggots feasting on corpses.

"Sumthin' the matter, Gaston?"

"Riguel and Nikol haven't returned," Gaston, one of Guts' raiders, speaks in a low voice, eyes full of admiration. Griffith had never before given him more than a passing thought—a trusted soldier, Guts had told him once—but now, in the confines of this floating coffin that'll guard them all after dehydration leaves only their husks, Griffith feels his eyes on him tinted with suspicion, knows Gaston is aware that Guts shines brighter, able to eclipse everyone's dream.

"How long?"

"Longer than usual." Gaston bites his lip and Guts look over at the horizon, trying to spot the launch with Riguel and Nikol on it.

"We'll wait—"

From where he sits, his arm leaning on an empty wooden crate, Corkus grunts tiredly. "We've waited long enough," he says, his eyes gleaming, not on Guts but on Griffith.

Griffith knows he echoes the thoughts of all of them on the ship. Maybe even Guts'.

"We'll keep waitin'" Guts says, though. It's not like there's anything else to do.

Griffith doesn't know how much time has gone by but he finds himself shaken awake when Guts repositions his arm.

"Sorry," he says his voice thick with sleep and thirst, "couldn't feel the arm, fell asleep m'guessin'."

It had because Griffith had been leaning on it to sleep, Guts had placed it maybe unwittingly under his head, behind his back, to keep him from feeling the hard wood of the ship's side on his tired backbone.

Now that they're awake they can see. They are alone.

Heavy mist envelops them, the ship, everything in their vicinity, thick and impenetrable, impossible to see father than a couple of meters. He shivers. It isn't cold but he shivers and he feels Guts shiver too, then look at him.

"Remember what you told me?" he whispers, as if it were the dead of night and they were hiding from someone, from something. "If you shiver in the sun s'cos someone stepped on yer grave, where yer grave's gonna be after ya die."

Old fool's tale. It only happens to people who'll die before their time, Griffith wishes he could say. But it wouldn't be reassuring. He simply nods, is warmed by the small, cold smile on Guts' face.

Griffith looks at him, regards his expression for a moment, the peeled off, flaky skin on his face, the open wounds on his lips, and has to remind himself this invisibility isn't permanent. This secrecy isn't to last, they've been plucked away from everything, and no matter how much he wishes for it, there's nothing he can do to change that fact. The mist will dissipate and Guts will belong to others, and Griffith's face will be separated from his by a thick iron mask. But right now, this is where they are. The only people left alive in the world, hidden in a fortress of mist and longing and despair where not even voices are needed because it's just the two of them and Guts looks at him with the same expression he knows he wears on his face. Their hands entwine and Guts swallows—must be nothing but air considering how dry they all are—and then—right then—a painful scream rips the veil of their shrine, their secret hideout, coming from everywhere at once.

Griffith can't see anything but Guts and the thick heavy mist but he's not surprised when Guts pulls him closer to him, draws his dagger and looks around them, ready to protect Griffith's life the way Griffith would protect his if only he could.

If only he hadn't abandoned you.

He pushes away from Guts, faintly, but Guts only tightens his hold, especially when another scream that's painted in blood as far as Griffith can imagine pierces through the stagnant air.

Steps draw closer, thudding against the wood of The Hamadryad's deck, and Guts points his sword towards their sound. From behind the mist Casca emerges, halts her motion right in front of Guts' dagger, aimed at her chest, and the two of them exchange a look Griffith can't read—he's being left out—but knows is more meaningful than what their actions after want to say. Guts puts down the dagger and says he couldn't see anything, and she says I know, says she thought Griffith was in danger, lets her eyes linger on the way Guts holds onto Griffith's weak body and Griffith wishes she couldn't even see that, wear that expression on her face.

"What's goin' on?" she asks no one in particular, after there's a wailing lament that sounds like a funeral cry.

"I don't know!" Guts says, rising his voice in the howling wind, his face looking hopeful. "Doesn't matter!"

The waves start rising, the sails flapping. Guts lets go of him, hands him his dagger.

"I'll go set the sails," he says over the sound of the wind, his voice hoarse with excitement.

Guts disappears in the mist and Griffith tries to call out to him, but nothing comes out. His hand shakes, dropping the dagger to the floor, and he feels a void forming underneath him, it's nausea coming over—he remembers from the tower how it felt—no matter how much he tries no words come out. Casca disappears the way she came from, calling out to Guts. He hears Judeau's voice calling out to Pippin, and other voices clashing with each other and the wind, all of them disembodied, far away, and then another scream that's deadly, and to his side he watches Riguel and Nikol climbing on the ship, their faces and hands covered in blood, their nets and boxes carrying dead fish, and they look at him with fear, blood streaming out of their eyes, their mouths, their ears, their noses, the dagger is out of reach as they come closer to him, he wants to call out to Guts for help—that's all he can do now, depend on him, have his life in his hands—but then he sees them, closer still, no blood on them, they wear smiles.

"The wind's back," their voices come out exhausted, worn out, but they have them still.

Slowly the sails take shape, the ship lets go of its dreadful stagnation, and the mist starts lifting enough to let Griffith watch the whole crew manning the ship, even the navigator. Maybe they're just leaving it behind. Griffith marvels at the human spirit, their ability to gather up enough strength to man the ship despite the hunger and the thirst, their will to survive far stronger than anything else in their minds.

Guts comes to his side once more, sees the dagger on the floor and picks it up. He wears a smile on his face that's only fleetingly concerned, seeing that Griffith is safe. Griffith feels his chest tighten, his ribs aching.

They sail for hours, maybe, long enough to spot land on the horizon, a piece of land the navigator says he's unfamiliar with, but the promise of a river of sweet water is all they need to approach the clear beaches of dark sand. Guts turns to him with a wide smile, looking like a child full of hope.

Pippin comes, hoists him up on his back, and from there he watches the crew descend on the beach, some of them kissing the sand, and watches Casca regard her surroundings with the caution of someone who's been raised in the battlefield, same as Guts. They both turn to Griffith at the same time, and he tries mimicking his words in a way they'll understand. He thinks they do. In an instant they're talking to the other members of the band, and after some moments they're back to him.

"They all heard the screamin', but it was none of 'em."

Griffith turns, from Pippin's back, to watch the navigator, who turns just as he does, pretending he hadn't been staring at Griffith. His guard has left him in favor of running up the beach, looking for a town or a river, and he might be too weak now to escape but they can't be too careful. He points in his direction and watches Casca walk closer to him, aware of what must be done to avoid any escape.

They walk into town after spending as long as possible by the river, swimming and drinking, resting, carrying clear fresh water to those who stayed behind to watch over The Hamadryad—among them the navigator after Casca escorted him back to the ship—Griffith still on Pippin's back, wrapped up in Guts' cape to hide his bandaged body.

The townsfolk don't spare more than a couple glances their way, mostly directed at Pippin and Guts, their height surprising, and Griffith, perched on Pippin's back. Other than that it seems their arrival is mostly par for the course, nothing they haven't seen before, nothing to remark on. Casca carries the bags of coins close to her chest, assigns tasks to Judeau, Kim, and Rickert, the ones that came with them, like finding a store where to purchase bandages and food that'll last them a long while and live animals and feed if they can find them. And perhaps a source of more money, for the rest of their trip might be just as difficult.

Griffith takes in the scenes of the town with caution, too, exchanges a look with Guts now and then which makes everything feel safer, less of a threat. It's possible no one here knows anything about them. They promised those they left on the ship that after they returned they were allowed to spend their time in town but it wasn't something they could risk before making sure the place was safe.

They walk down the high streets and the market stalls, watching the merchants call them over, offering their vases, their silk, their recently killed meat. Griffith wonders at the ease of their transition, how far away the days spent on The Hamadryad with no water and watching some of them slowly lose their patience and their drive seem now that they're on land and everything in the world has continued as it always has been. Now that their thirst has been sated and their losses can be counted in one hand only. He feels Guts watching him and he's sure he's thinking about the same thing because the smile on his face is slow and sad but confident. At least we made it, it says, at least we're here. At least you're really no longer in that tower. You're really—

At the end of the road they're walking down an old woman with white hair and wrinkled skin, wrapped in colorful clothes, drops to her knees. Two younger women come to her aid, one at each side, holding her up by the arms as she speaks in a language Griffith can't understand, looking straight at him.

It's enough for Guts to assume a defensive stance. Or an attacking one. But the woman does nothing but speak, her voice colored by fear and respect, and is then taken away by the other two women, while they calm her down in soothing voices, though she still tries to look back at Griffith, and he feels others staring at him too, staring at Guts with concern and worry and distrust.

"Wha was that?" Guts turns to him, to the others.

"She said—" Kim starts but hesitates when one the merchants approaches them. He speaks in the same language as the woman and Kim replies in it too. He nods and the man watches Griffith out of the corner of his eye like he was expecting a different sight to be there if he wasn't looking at him directly. Another merchant comes bearing a basket with bread and fruits and offers it to Griffith who watches it for a while before he nods with a smile. Rickert takes.

Kim clears his throat. "They say she's the kallawaya of this land," he swallows. "Like a healer, he adds. She said Griffith would be king of all that's known."

Kim isn't looking at him, Griffith realizes, when he says this. He's looking at his hands, at his feet.

"The merchants wanted to show their respects," he finishes.

"That all she said?" Guts looks at him with suspicion, and Kim doesn't raise his eyes to meet Guts'.

"No," he says softly, wringing his hands.

"What else then?"

"Said there wouldn't even be bones left of the rest of us." He gets it all out in a single breath.

Griffith can feel dread rising up like bile up his throat, he can feel the nausea return to the pits of his stomach, and no voice with which to defend himself, no voice to say he doesn't know what that woman is talking about. He lets go of his precarious hold on Pippin's shoulders, tries to hold himself up, and finds himself wincing from the pain of his ribs, his wounds, his strained tendons, feels his upper body bending backwards, straining and tensing every single one of his tired battered muscles. And he's met with Guts' hands, Guts eyes looking straight at his, Guts hold on his body, impossibly delicate like he knows those hands shouldn't be.

Guts positions him again on Pippin's back, rubs his back with his hand, wraps the cape tighter on his body.

"You okay?" he asks.

Griffith wishes so, so deeply he could reply.

He nods.

"M'glad. Let's get the stuff and get outta here," Guts smiles at him. "M'tired."

They return to the ship carrying large crates with food and supplies and alcohol. One of the merchants handed them a cage with two hens, said they'd lay ten eggs every day, promised on her life, and a rooster to go with them who'd wake them up at dawn. Griffith wished he had something to give her, something other than dread and fear and the deep desire to leave their land as fast as possible. Maybe flowers.

Pippin carries him to his room where Casca feeds him, her salty, rough fingers reaching inside his mouth while they pretend it isn't disgusting, it isn't wrong. She doesn't say anything, sitting in front of him. Doesn't mention what happened in town, or the days theywere stuck, or what she told him the navigator said. She simply smiles and says she's relieved and tired and they should all rest. She was always so loyal and faithful and yet all he can see now, all he can feel, is the way she'd reached out her hands to Guts' face and he didn't squirm away from her touch. All he can see is the way she sometimes rubs her stomach when her eyes trail after Guts.

Later that night Guts himself sneaks into his room, carrying with him a bottle of rum.

"Hey," he says as he pats him over the knee like he's taken to doing, helps him move over on the bed to leave a space in it for Guts.

Griffith knows he tries not to take up too much, he keeps himself on the edge, like he was told once he took too much space he didn't deserve and he believed it. Believes it still. This isn't something Griffith saw before, not this clear. Time spent with his own thoughts and his own demons and struggling to make himself heard without a voice has afforded him better vision. Guts has shared with him pieces of his past Griffith never expected to hear, never thought he had a right to even though Guts belonged to him, because Guts kept a tight hold around them and would offer Griffith other things. But now he can see a path where they'll be together. And whatever that woman said—

"Y'know," Guts stars. "What that woman said—"

Griffith tries to open his mouth—it doesn't have to happen, it doesn't need to be true. He's thought of fate as inescapable but here he is. Guts is by his side. He begs silently for Guts not to say anything that'll break the spell.

"—don't mean it's gotta be true, right?"

"Aa—aa," is all Griffith manages to say out loud, with his lack of tongue.

"S'just an old hag."

Griffith is suddenly reminded of the old woman who gave him the behelit, and the skeleton, and Zodd, and his stomach feels empty, turned over, but he manages a smile. Just an old hag. Just that. Just that.

He puts his hand to Guts' cheek, watches his eyes open wide, then narrow with warmth.

It's just them here, there's nothing else outside of the mist. Just the two of them, invisible to the rest of the world. Guts is by his side. Just that.


	8. wishing you'd do it right

The wind hit him square in the face.

Its airy tendrils slapped his cheeks, his nose, salt rubbing on his sun kissed skin, the remnant wounded flakes of overexposed dead skin stinging.

It didn't matter, now, because the sword, the all seeing eye that kept watch over his sleep at night, in tents in the middle of the battlefield, was with him now, swinging, cutting through air and wind and past.

The wind whispered words of a war he'd all but forgotten. Behind his eyelids when exhaustion got the best of him, up in the crow's nest, keeping watch, he saw golden specks of past glories surrounding the figure of Griffith, cut out against the horizon, the pink hues of sunset behind him, someone he could follow, who'd turn to see if he was still there, even in the midst of battle.

Swinging his sword he didn't think of the words coming from an old hag in a language he couldn't understand. He didn't have to think about the Skull Knight laughing at him, the day he left Griffith, left behind the Band of the Hawk. He didn't think about Zodd pointing to Griffith's neck—nor the fear that'd coiled around his heart at the thought that he could do nothing to protect Griffith, in that moment. He didn't think of Casca's words he still struggled to understand, or why, in spite of himself, he'd found it easier to let her do as she pleased, tell him there was nothing between them, almost like relief he hadn't been expecting.

Swinging his sword there were no aches but those of his muscles.

They've left that land far behind and Kim did not tell the others what that woman said. The navigator hadn't heard it. Prophecies can be wrong, Guts knew. He knew because Griffith told him, once, when discussing stories or histories or something Griffith learned in the confines of his room in Midland's castle, surrounded by shelves lined with books and papers and oil lamps burning throughout the night. He'd found his way to where Guts was sleeping, shaken him awake, and started speaking, more interested, perhaps, in hearing himself talk to someone than whatever it was Guts had to say about it—not much—but he'd talked, to him, to Guts, about something that seemed to be important. Prophecies can be wrong. Their interpretation is as good as humans trying to understand each other's words. Something like that. How a sentence holds as many different meanings as there are people in the world who can hear or read it.

And so the old hag could be wrong.

Not about Griffith becoming king. Guts never doubted that. Not even when the helplessness of Griffith's current state had been fully revealed to him, a body beyond repair cast out of—what was it, that Griffith said, the cogs of history, the men—he didn't want to think about it. But he didn't doubt that. The other things though. The things Skull Knight and Zodd had also warned him of. A fate you can't escape. Those things could be wrong. Those things they could always stand up against, point a sword at, defeat. What's fate in the face of what Griffith has already accomplished. Someone like him growing up in the backstreets of inconsequential towns slipping through the cracks, using them as steps, climbing the steep sharp rocks lining the castle walls, step by step, reaching the point he'd already reached. He'd done that on his own. (Hadn't he?) He had. He'd done that on his own, he'd defied his own fate of dying in those backstreets without a name to mark his grave (was that really his own fate?) and he'd gotten somewhere no one believed he'd get to.

He didn't want to think so he pushed every word away by swinging his sword in the middle of the night while he was out on watch and the wind slapped his face his back and his sides.

"Captain?" Gaston's voice came clear from just below the crow's nest.  
They were sailing steadily, lands on the horizon to the east, on their way to Inis Fáil, cutting through waves and falling rain. Morning had just broken a few hours ago, Guts had watched the sunrise in between bouts of sleep, relieved from his look out duties by Riguel.  
Gaston had his hands on his hat—he made it himself—nervously gripping its flaps, Guts could see as he climbed down the mast.  
"Whas the matter?"  
"The others and I were thinking to organize a tournament—"  
"Tournament?"  
"Yeah, sword fight? Get everyone in on it. And the General can be the judge."  
"Griffith?"

He didn't like the word. Hearing it now. The General. Their Leader. The Viscount of the White Phoenix. He didn't like it now when the image burned into the back of his brain was that of Griffith's face behind the heavy iron mask, moving his lips attempting to utter words, his hand weakly placed on Guts' thigh, his broken rib jutting out under his skin. Sometimes he found himself doubting things could ever be as they once were. Doubting they could go back to that time. Those times he had to grip the hilt of his sword tighter, shut his eyes, swing hard and fast enough for the edge of his blade to cut through the murky waters of his brain coming up with those thoughts. A distraction.

"Sounds fun, yeah."  
"Really?"  
"Nuthin else to do here 'nyways."

There was a time he steered clear of their loud celebrations, sat cross legged and far from them, off to the side, with his sword keeping watch over him, and his senses on the place where Griffith sat, his thoughts on the fact that somehow he always was aware of the place where Griffith was, at all times. One terrible winter, the worst winter he remembered in years, he'd watched a soldier, his hands, holding a boot that inside held his own frozen foot, ripped out by his own hands in the freezing that looked to settle atop everyone's flesh and bone and rip them apart. The soldier looked at his own foot in his hands and the image of his face danced in front of Guts, in the darkness around him. Shattered bones and torn meat are only gruesome when they belong to someone, he remembered hearing from someone, maybe Gambino. That night he'd left his tent in the hopes that it would be less freezing outside. He'd left the big party with a jug of whiskey and an empty promise to return but he'd burned the night away in training and avoiding. Underneath a tree he found Griffith, softly lit by the burning fire near him which casted shadows on his features deceiving the eyes to make them think it was him, Griffith, who glowed, as if the darkness which covered all, including Guts, could never touch him. His hands were carving something—Guts didn't want to look but Griffith gave him the wooden horse afterwards anyway—and he smiled up at Guts. Almost as if he'd been expecting him.

"Can't sleep?" he'd asked, his voice muted against the dry wind blowing on the plains.  
"Yeah—y'too?"  
Griffith had nodded and shown him a place to take, by his side. "It's too cold."  
"Y'know," Guts had said after a while, after warming himself by Griffith's fire. "Judeau said y'also used to be like me..." He'd been emboldened by the dark, the cover of night, but now he felt on the spot, his nape itched.  
"How so?"  
"Said that ya used to—not hang around their parties either."  
"Ah."  
"S'not true, is it? Yer always—"  
Griffith had smiled at him again. Guts had thought again that he was beautiful, that he was glowing. Then he'd looked back down at his hands, still carving.  
"I suppose it is, yes. I've found lately I'm—more comfortable joining in. I want to."  
"Huh, didn't take ya for that kinda guy."  
"It's because you came along."  
"Wh-wha?"  
"That's why now I want to."  
Griffith hadn't lifted his eyes from the small horse he was carving, and another silence settled between the two of them in the dark. Guts had began to think he'd dreamt the whole thing, and then Griffith had spoken again, just a whisper over the dry winds.  
"Some years ago, I was leaving the battlefield and stepped on something. When I looked down, it was someone's hand… But there was no body. It was just a hand, lying there, open, no dirt or blood on it, just the clean, clear skin, like it'd been purposely placed there. I was going to pick it up, bury it, but someone called for me, and I left. And it stayed. It stayed with me for a while too, not very long. Hands do everything for us, they are who we are, and this hand was alone but it was someone too, it was somebody lying alone, dying alone. Nothing was clean or clear about them, except their detached hand, left behind, no longer a body, no body in sight. Maybe death in war could be like that hand for some, at least a few, clean and just that. Sometimes it gets so cold your foot remains inside your boot and it looks clean. But it isn't."

And Guts had lifted his hand, he was ready to place it on Griffith's shoulder but stopped himself halfway through.  
"It's not cold here, by you," he'd said. "I like it." And his hand which had still been suspended in the air, close to the other man's shoulder, still close to offering a pat on the back, had finally rested on Griffith's forearm, next to his hand, a symbol of comfort and of trust, a symbol he'd learned not to give anyone years ago.

He wondered why his mind chased away those thoughts. The fact that Griffith had asked for his comfort, for his company, that he had shared more than once with Guts and Guts alone that he'd been scared of being the one to lead them all to their certain death, and perhaps for nothing. He wondered why he did that to him.

Hesitating now and thinking there was no way to go back to those times was wrong.

They had to, they had to return to that time, maybe even that winter, and Guts would be better at it, he'd have better words, he'd do more, then. He'd offer more than a hand on his forearm.

Guts himself went to Griffith's quarters, where he knew Casca would be readying to give him his meal, which he was forbidden from attending. He suspected it had to do with Griffith's lack of tongue and he didn't want to pry so he'd asked no questions and kept himself away. He'd wait outside until they finished before letting them know about the tournament. But Casca came out of the room running, towards the head, but didn't make it there, throwing up water and chunks of food onto the wooden planks some ways away from Guts.

"Hey, you okay?"  
"Yeah," she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. "Sumtimes s'hard."  
"Hard?"

Casca looked at him with intensity. He didn't like that look. Was too much like before, when she hated and resented him and watched as Griffith and he rested on the grassy slopes after a battle with fire and anger in her eyes.

"Don't worry about it."  
"I'll clean that."  
Casca shrugged.  
"Thanks," and she turned towards the room again. But then she warned again, as if Guts had forgotten. "Don't come in till we're done."

Before she closed the door Guts caught the image of Griffith, inside the Captain's quarters, sitting in his chair, a plate of food in front of him, and the mask off his face. He smiled at Griffith and Griffith smiled back and it was not unlike the time he'd smiled at him in the ballroom in Midland, the day before he left. The day before he abandoned—the day before Griffith was captured—the day before—that day.

He carried Griffith up on deck for the tournament. It was the first time he did. Griffith was so slight in his arms, barely there. They both sat at the edge of the ship as the crew stood around forming a semi circle with them at the head, in a sense. The raiders had urged Guts to join but Griffith had held onto his arm and given him a look and Guts didn't even need to see his face before he said no.

His thoughts shied away from that morning, the duel in the snow, kept him away in fear of finding there the shards of his own guilt, his part on Griffith's undoing. On his own. He rarely thought of it in his year away from the Hawks and Griffith and still he felt an ache like a fractured bone that never quite healed humming under the exhaustion of his muscles when he wondered what might be of them, of Griffith. Now that he knows the details that unfolded after that duel he skirts away from the memories as if nearly approaching them was enough to break all his bones once more.

So of course he wouldn't take part of the tournament, not just because he was partially certain no one other than Griffith could best him in combat, but because now there was no one left aboard the ship he'd want to duel other than Griffith. His goal had been always to become Griffith's equal and now the field wasn't even, it had been burnt and torched and plowed and nothing was left but the hope that they'd return to those long distant days, before he left, before he even thought of leaving.

"Kings are gonna be judges, then?" Corkus said, one hand on his hip.

It was meant as a biting comment and Guts felt his insides turn. There was something off about it, in this particular situation. But of course—how could he expect different—Griffith placed the palm of his hand on the back of Guts' one and nodded, a look as serious as he'd ever bore, no sign of his childish playfulness. It left no room for laughing or arguing and everyone just took it as that, the truth, spoken by someone incidentally. This only made it worse. Guts felt his skin tickle all over with the itch of anxiety and worry. The idea that he was being pitied, or worse, that now that Griffith had fallen so low they could be—in any way—maybe even—somehow—equals—that was. Unacceptable. Every single one of his organs tightened with nausea and apprehension. He hadn't gotten anywhere even in that whole year he'd been away. Maybe going back to a time before then wasn't such a great idea after all. And yet that was the only thing that now could ever bring to approximate hope in any way. He had to cling to that. They all had to. Going back to how things used to be.

Wind hit the sails straight on and Rickert passed out water and alcohol to those watching. Two members of the Band of the Hawk stood in the center of the circle, daggers drawn, their gazes painted with excitement and anticipation, the sound of their boots crunching against the wood of the ship drowned out by the music of the waves and the sails and the hoots and hollers of the men surrounding them. Ropes slid against wood in rhythm with a melody Guts was finding hard to rid his thoughts of. They'd been on the ship long enough that he'd been growing used to its sounds and its soft whispers. Up in the crows nest he tuned his hearing to identify every passing sound with the caution he'd trained since birth. Griffith pulled him away from that, back to the present, feebly squeezing his hand which he was still touching. Guts lifted his glass with a big broad smile and gave the two fighters the go ahead.

Suddenly the sound of metal against metal, the spark of iron meeting iron, the short but meaningful grunts of battle filled the air again. It was like returning after a long journey away from home. It was all he'd ever known. Griffith's grip on the back of his hand got tighter, somehow, so Guts turned his to hold Griffith's hand in his, squeeze it gently once, twice, three times, following the rhythm of the daggers hitting each other as Nikol and Emil put on a show of mock battle to decide who'd be the victor. It took Guts some moments to fully realize he was holding Griffith's hand. To fully realize, again, maybe not for the first time but perhaps as if it was, just how easy it was to let the other man close, to let him in, to give in to his touch. Aside from Casca in that clearing—and that too had hurt—he had no recollection of this kind of companionship.

Emil was a gifted fighter, that much was clear. He dodged Nikol's strikes—Guts recognized his own way of swinging the sword in some of Nikol's movements, felt some sort of strange pride and embarrassment—with ease. But Nikol had experience and raw determination on his side, and a dogged need to push forward despite the pain, so no matter how many hits Emil got in, it only made Nikol go harder, attack faster, keep going. Until Emil would eventually tire out and the fight would be decided either by the effectiveness of Emil's blow or the stamina of Nikol's continuous attack.

The other men shouted advice or discouragement. Riguel and Corkus had started a betting pool—one day's food and water rations despite warnings that went unheeded—and the odds were placed on Nikol as the winner ("if only because he's one of the raiders").

"I'd like to see Emil win," Guts whispered softly into Griffith's ear.  
Griffith nodded. He would too, probably. He liked stories where the one with less chances won out. He'd told some of those to Guts, back then.  
"Feel guilty though, Nikol's one of my men."  
Griffith squeezed his hand again, looked pointedly at Emil, the sweat on his face, the bite of his lower lip, the blood on his knuckles and forearms.  
He must've been seeing something Guts wasn't. That's why he was their leader, after all.  
"Guess judges shouldn't take sides."  
Griffith nodded again.

Emil used his body, getting his shoulder stabbed in the process, to slam Nikol on the ground, press the dagger to his neck.

"Guess I won," he said, his voice raspy.

Nikol let out a short grunt, came out a little like a laugh, then twisted the dagger in Emil's shoulder and pulled him back with a leg to his torso when Emil was distracted by the pain, and knocked him to his side, then stood above him, his foot on Emil's neck, Emil's dagger out of reach.

The men started yelling, shouting, raising their arms in the air. They looked to Griffith and Guts for their verdict. Guts was about to raise his glass again, but Griffith stopped him, and everyone's eyes followed Griffith's to Emil, who grabbed onto Nikol's foot, twisted with an unpleasant crunch, knocked Nikol off his feet but had no strength left to stand. They both lie, in the middle of the semi circle, their breaths ragged, laughing like children at the end of their game.

Guts hadn't really enjoyed any kind of childhood mischief, had never actually played a pretend battle, he was occupied with other things, but one day Griffith and him had seen a group of children playing, pretending they were the Band of the Hawk, carrying swords made of wood and banners made from discarded clothes, and one of them, Griffith had pointed out, was the Captain of the Raiders.  
"So kids really play like that huh?"  
"Growing up I did too."  
"You were the leader, m'guessin'?"  
And Griffith had smiled, they'd gone on their way, left the laughing children behind.

"It's a draw!" Guts announced then, with his glass raised.

Everyone else complained.

"Tha's why yer the judges!"  
"Ya gotta make a decision."

Emil and Nikol were now sitting on the floor, expectantly watching Guts. He turned to Griffith and Griffith then turned to Emil, pointed to him with his hand, weakly but clearly. He was trying to speak. Guts could see and sense the frustration in his expression, even if Griffith was doing his best to keep it at bay.

"Emil," Guts said then, with confidence. "Yer the first to win. Ya go onto the next round."

Half the men cheered, the other half, the ones that'd lost a day's ration of food and water, complained loudly.

Guts scratched the back of his head, spilled the alcohol in the glass he was holding all over his back, gained himself some laughter.

"Ah, well, see, s'cos, Emil made use of everythin', the distraction when e'ryone thought Nikol'd won. In a tournament maybe he'd lose but, in battle, he'd win with that. Right?" He turned to Griffith then, who nodded. He looked happy now.

Guts felt every single one of his organs tighten again. There was something in Griffith's expression he couldn't pinpoint. Made him feel like there was no one else there but him and Griffith, and made him feel like everyone else too could see that Griffith was looking at him like that. Like he'd read his mind. Like he'd understood him. Like no one else ever had before or ever would after. Or perhaps that was just how he felt, he couldn't tell.

There was a silence, or maybe not, but it was broken at least by the cheering of the men. Their chanting of Emil's name, who helped Nikol up, grabbing his own shoulder, and walked over to where Kim waited with bandages and alcohol to clean their fresh wounds.

Gaston drew two more pieces of papers with names on them—he'd written them himself since many of the members couldn't read or write—and announced the next two fighters, Casca and Judeau.

"Tha's easy," Riguel said, "I'm for Casca, who else?"

Most of the men placed their bets on her, too. The others just didn't bet at all.

Guts was reminded of his first encounter with the Hawks, how she'd been the one to fight him, because other than Griffith no one else was as strong, as skilled, as good at combat. He smiled at her, as she took the centre of the circle with her head held high, followed by Judeau, his shoulders hunched, sure of his defeat before the fight even started, and just as he was about to raise his glass, now empty, to her, Griffith tugged on his hand, made Guts look at him with a look in his eyes Guts couldn't recognize or place or decipher, then smiled softly too, looked at Casca, and prompted Guts with another tug of the hand to raise the glass and start the fight.


	9. keeping the eyes from turning back

Guts told her about the tournament after she'd fed Griffith and for a second she was close to admonishing him.

For a second she thought of forgetting that everything done inside the ship was no more than mere distraction, passing the time, waiting for the next day, the next meal, the next anything that'd relieve the boredom, the anxiety, the looming knowledge that this seemingly endless voyage was for nothing.

Everything's been a mirage since they rescued Griffith.

Possibly before that.

Everything's been a mirage since she took up the sword to defend herself and follow Griffith without looking back.

She allowed her name to be written in one of the pieces of paper—a page ripped by her own hand from one of the ship logs—almost distractedly, though starkly aware of what this entailed.

Guts would not be competing, she knew this even before Guts and Griffith were appointed judges. She knew because she'd seen more than even those two had seen at their duel in the snow.

They looked the part, at least, of kings overseeing their court.

And maybe it was all in her mind, or maybe she just wanted it to be so, but when she and Judeau took the center of the circle Griffith nodded at her in recognition, in allowance. She still was his trusty right hand man, the one she'd been before Guts showed up. Her chest was hollow and tight and the only heartbeat she could feel was in her stomach. She felt suddenly like throwing up so she held her head high and turned her back away from Guts and Griffith, faced Judeau head on, watched his quietly surrendered face and had half a mind to tell him off. She disliked the idea of anyone giving up before the fight had even started, despised it. Perhaps because she'd found herself doing so out of tiredness, out of necessity, out of complacency, countless times before.

She'd given up on Griffith before there was even a need to, before the thought had formed itself clearly in her mind and her heart, because she was sure it had to be so. She told Guts as much and even he had tried in his own way to encourage her small dream.

Judeau withdrew his two short swords and waited for her to draw hers, the one she'd been brandishing for years, before lunging. At least he had enough in him to initiate the attack.

Casca noticed he carefully aimed for her legs so she aimed for his heart which had him retreating with surprise on his face and a smile that was more sad than wry.

The men booed his cowardice and his smile turned apologetic, aimed at them.

This angered her to no end. How dared he be paying attention to the others, keeping an ear out for things outside this, the matter at hand, their battle. Either he was really a fool or he wasn't taking her seriously. Never mind that this was simply a friendly duel, hurriedly organized in the midst of boredom, framed by salty air and rocking motions of waves. She hated to think there might be something in her—the part she'd tried to fight against so damn hard, the thing all the men used against her—that had sharpened, perhaps, with time, that had turned her from the strongest member of the Hawks to one Judeau and others pitied in battle.

It was a given that she was a woman, considered a woman. Sometimes she felt like a woman too. Sometimes she knew she existed outside of such ridiculous notions, man, woman, in a time before matter, before shape, before self, where she was neither and could do battle better than anyone who'd trapped themselves in the imaginary implications of their sex. But at the end of the day it was a given that she was a woman, she was told and reminded. She knew that that condition, which she supposed she had to bear quietly, was not to blame for the feelings she'd come to harbor towards Griffith. She knew it wasn't that easy, yet she'd let herself blame that and nothing else.

If only she'd been a man, she'd thought more than once or twice or a million times.

But she knew too that if she'd been a man she'd have held the same feelings, she could be sure, and would've perhaps suffered all the more for it.

So it angered her that Judeau was carefully aiming his strikes at her limbs. Her legs, her arms—not her hands as if not to knock the sword out of her hands—never her head or her torso. And that she was too focused on that anger to retaliate in more than a mock battle, almost a dance.

So she slashed in the only way she'd learned to—not like Judeau in a circus and not like the trained soldiers they fought—with her own anger driving inelegant and rough movements of her sword meant to kill and defeat and not entertain anyone, she was nobody's toy, she was no one's side show—the Strongest Woman in the World—she was not here for anything other than taking a kingdom by force and serving Griffith till the end.

She was a knight.

Her strike was effective, of course, as it should've been on Guts all those years ago, and Judeau dropped his swords, clothes torn in his chest, blood pouring from the recent wound, and a look of disbelief painted on his face. She'd seen that look in others before. As if surprised that a woman would be able to kill them, that they'd meet their end under a woman's hand, as if they'd never met any others like her even though she'd seen them with her own eyes, recognized in them the same doggedness of those who are told they are something and cannot change their fate and would not listen.

Anger subsided with victory and she almost instantly felt remorse.

The men clapped her shoulders and cheered for her but she kept watching Judeau, on the floor of the deck, holding onto his chest, his hand almost entirely covered in blood. She helped him up and walked him to where Kim waited to tend to his wounds, and she watched over the process in silence. She'd never say she was sorry but was aware that she'd been unfair, somehow.

Judeau's labored breath was all she heard for a while, despite another duel starting shortly after hers ended, and she kept her eyes on Kim's hand working to stitch the wound after cleaning it.

She turned once to watch Griffith and Guts but their eyes were on the battle—their hands still entwined as if it was a given for them too. The image brought back the kind of pain she thought she'd grow out of someday, the kind of pain she'd experienced in solitude, watching Griffith throw himself in harm's way for a simple soldier who'd joined barely a year ago, watching Guts forget himself and everyone else while desperately running to meet Griffith inside that tower.

"I'll walk ya to yer quarters," she told Judeau once he opened his eyes after the wound had been stitched. "Y'should rest, yeah?"

He nodded slowly, let her put his arm over her shoulders for support.

She'd been in the crew's quarters only about two times before, when Braid stabbed Olin to his death, and when there was a water leak they'd done their best to repair under the guidance of the navigator who grunted and mumbled to himself at their every move. She was there to keep the men from killing him in retaliation.

Most of the men slept in hammocks hanging from the ship's structure, others on piles of sheets and wool and clothes they'd secured with nails to the floor. It was an improvement from their days as thieves. Even as he was now Griffith somehow managed to lead them to better places than where they'd been before. It was obvious then that they'd follow him and no one else, that they'd been following him so long. He who did so much for them and asked only that they believed. The ship wasn't half bad. Even if this journey led nowhere they could always become pirates, the crew would manage, and the very name of them would strike fear in the hearts of the world.

She helped Judeau settle into his hammock, he was grimacing in pain with the effort, then stood at the side of it, watching him in silence before he opened his eyes and his mouth.

"You didn't need to bring me here. Don't feel sorry. Was a fair fight."

"Were ya holdin' back?"

Judeau tried laughing but he coughed and his features twisted in pain. Maybe she cut deeper than she thought initially. He shook his head.

"You'd notice if I did."

"Why were ya aimin' only for my limbs, then?"

His face went solemn and his eyes looked away from her, to a spot somewhere else. She resisted the urge to follow his line of vision, knowing there was nothing there but an opportunity not to have to look her in the eye.

"S'just."

He didn't finish the sentence, if it even was that and not a random thought that escaped through his lips. She watched the way his fingers were softly posed above his wound, protectively. He was good at giving advice and voicing her thoughts and she'd placed a large amount of trust in him but there was always something out of focus when they spoke, it had always been there, as if he wasn't being honest yet expected her to know what it was that he was hiding or twisting or pretending wasn't there. She'd resent the way he spoke to her sometimes, as if she wasn't catching all the meanings held by his words, if she didn't find the idea daunting and the task tiring. She had other things to worry about, always had had those, and she needed allies in honesty not ones who'd keep things veiled behind ambiguous hints she had no way of deciphering.

"What?"

Enough time had passed that she could be sure he wasn't going to give any answer if she didn't push it.

He looked at her, once again letting moments go by without a word, and then broke out into a smile.

"Why d'you ask?"

"Cos s'true. Y'were goin' only for my limbs."

"Ah."

"Ah," she echoed, not really intending to sound curt.

He sighed, exhaling loudly, flinching slightly because of, Casca imagined, the pain in his chest.

"The navigator says we should reach Inis Fáil in a couple days if the winds accompany us."

"Don't change—"

"Heard him say other stuff too, have you?"

"Stuff?"

"About Griffith."

Casca knew she should press with her original questions but Judeau used his silver tongue whenever he was letting her know she should be aware of something he'd never spoken aloud.

"It's bad for morale," Judeau continued on that line.

"If what he says riles 'em up, makes them leave, they shouldn't be here anyway. Never shoulda been. S'best if they're gone. Let 'im talk."

"Heh, that's our Commander."

She could feel herself deflating, her desire to ask the questions and get the answers stepping back from what was at the forefront. Again, she felt so tired she could faint from exhaustion, give up on every little thing just for the chance of resting. She battled much more than just other humans, she should be allowed a respite, at least once.

Slowly she retreated from the quarters and was about to climb up the stairs back onto the deck when Judeau spoke up.

"Wasn't pityin' you. I didn't wanna go for your stomach."

"Why?" she turned around, narrowing her eyes.

"I think you know why."

She didn't reply. She didn't wanna give the matter more thoughts, none at all. This was yet just another given, that she had the kind of body that would have room for this kind of thing, this kind of life. She didn't ask for this, she hadn't wanted it before when all she thought was of being a sword, and now her mind slowly changed despite herself. But she rebelled against the notion that she could use this to make Guts look her way. Disgusting, that would be. To use this—that which she'd fought against, that condition she knew didn't set her aside from any one of the men—to have his eyes on her once more without the hesitation of his own unspoken, untouched, undecipherable feelings for someone else.

She grit her teeth.

"Don' say a word to anyone," she said with an even voice. "That's an order from yer Commander."

Even in the relative dark of the quarters she could make out his smile, which she knew was for himself.

"He doesn't know, huh? Guess I should've—" He smiled at her now. It was self effacing and irritating but she couldn't pinpoint the reason.

"Ya didn't need ta do that anyway. Whatever the reason. Wasn't a fair fight if ya were holdin' back."

"Ah, m'sorry."

She didn't reply and once again turned to climb the stairs. She didn't look back when Judeau spoke up again.

"Y'know if you don't wanna tell him. I'm sure there's volunteers to help. You don't need to be alone."

That night Casca pondered the words in the quiet solitude of the room she supposedly shared with Guts. She turned them over and dissected them and felt anger and loss and impatience forming around them. She didn't like the implications—of her own weakness, of her own need to cling to someone else, of her own inability to go on as they had before and have Guts and Griffith and herself approach their rotten bonds without her being a woman or having a womb she never asked for getting in the way or changing anyone's mind or having any sort of meaning.

She was a knight.

She didn't want to have any unfair advantage—or disadvantage—that stemmed solely from something that was completely out of her control. She was a knight and that was the life she knew. The life they all knew.

* * *

She was feeding Griffith his breakfast when it happened. It consisted of two barely boiled egg with soft pieces of bread floating in the almost liquid yolk and white mix. Rickert prepared the eggs like this because it made them easier for Griffith to swallow. She wished she knew whether Griffith appreciated the gesture or resented their treating him with so much caution, treading so lightly.

Before preparing him for the meal she'd spoken about the second day of the tournament—she'd be fighting Riguel who'd also passed on to the second round—but then had promptly closed her mouth and tried not to think about that one time days, maybe weeks ago, when Griffith had inadvertently slapped the bowl off her hands.

On the second to last spoonful he turned away from her, his eyes somewhere far from the ship, out the window. She looked too and spied large rocky cliffs dropping onto the sea, topped by emerald green, green grass that surrounded a tiny but clearly visible stone structure—a castle, maybe, or a church—and tiny bird like monoliths—the Holy See's symbols, surely—dotting one of the cliffsides as if to indicate those that'd died there, maybe fallen to their death.

Griffith opened his mouth and his voice came out in the pattern of vowels straining his vocal chords, his wounded throat. She wondered if maybe he'd inhaled smoke, on top of all the other things he'd had to endure, forced to withstand the oppressive heat of a fire burning in an enclosed space, the smoke filling up his lungs until unconsciousness. She wondered why she would ever think of that.

"Is that—?"

Her question was answered by two knocks on the door, short and soft. It was Rickert, she knew before opening, there at the door with joy and apprehension.

"This is my homeland."

* * *

Following Rickert's suggestions, and his own knowledge of the island, the navigator slowly sailed them along its coast until they found a beach of rocky sand called Cuas an Ghainimh he and Rickert agreed was the best spot for them to enter the island, for it was uninhabited yet stood close to Tara, where they'd find the Hill of Kings and the fairies. Before ordering the anchors to be dropped and finalizing his instructions to the crew he called for Casca, his liaison with the bunch of criminals that had basically taken him hostage, to remind her this was as far as he went. That had been the deal they'd struck when they'd taken over his ship back in Port Royal. This was the end of the line for him. He said it more than once, perhaps in fear that she'd back down on her words and forbid him from leaving. But she repeated herself, told him they'd leave him there once they departed the island, with what they needed. He made her give her word.

Stupid, of course, and sentimental—but they all dealt in sentimentality really following lofty dreams and codes of honor—yet she felt grateful, that he'd trust her word. She'd heard men whom she'd given her word to say it amounted to nothing, as if the mouth of a woman was somehow different from theirs, as if they were not the same bag of meat and bones and red blood and inevitable death. She was grateful all the same.

She shouldn't have been.

She understood as much when she stood over the corpse of the navigator, on the beach, his blood staining the sand, streaming slowly down a rock, trickling down to the sea.

Griffith—who had somehow, she divined, ordered the death—watched her closely when Guts—who had dealt the blow with his usual professionalism—posed his hand on her shoulder and told her "Too dangerous otherwise."

Casca wanted to reprimand herself for her lack of foresight. A promise like the one she'd made was a lie the moment she'd first uttered it, the moment she'd first told the man he'd be allowed to leave them after he led them to Inis Fáil. Somehow the merry quiet of their days at sea, even with all the obstacles in the way, had warped her mind enough, led her thoughts astray, far away enough from the battlefield or the urgency of being fugitives, to forget almost everyone around them was an enemy. Under the skin of every single person they came across potentially hid a traitor that'd lead Midland and other allied nations' armies their way to rip them apart like Wyald had almost managed to. This respite, floating on water in a wooden coffin, was nothing but that, an evasion they'd do well not to forget might be for no reason.

Griffith at least kept his wits about him.

At least he was there.

Still she felt sadness gripping every one of her organs from the inside. To think after all those years of mindless violence she'd withstood and sometimes enjoy that it'd be this simple act, this simple life, that'd make her feel this kind of regret watching the bloodstained sand and the lifeless eyes of the man who'd led them here. She knelt to close them with her hands and whisper encouragement. Saying she was sorry she'd lied would've been insulting.

"This really yer island, boy?" Gaston stood atop a rock, looking around himself with a hand placed above his eyes. "Far prettier than where I grew up. I never woulda left if I'd grown up here."

Casca watched Rickert nervously laugh, shrug his shoulders, and say he just wanted to see more.

She shuddered thinking maybe people would think her hometown beautiful too, think her a fool for leaving. She too looked around the rocky beach, the expanses of grass, the slopes in the distance, and somehow, for the first time in the entire journey she believed they'd entered another realm, she believed an elf would greet them at the Hill of Kings and lead them towards Griffith's salvation. She hadn't even felt that way when whatever that sea creature was appeared, not even when Wyald had grasped Griffith's frail body in his monstrous hand, not even when she'd agreed to board the ship with them. It was frightening and dreadful and not at all the kind of hopeful expectation she had wanted to anticipate. A howling wind shook the emerald gold fields of barley and they all stood silently on the beach, the corpse of the navigator still at their feet, as they watched the scenery before them, the sun setting slowly to signal the end of this day.


	10. no recoiling from the pain

He hears them talk. Just some ways away from him on deck. Whispers, hushed words, they flap their tongues, they open their jaws. They speak of his wounds, he hears the words, just barely. Why haven't they healed? It's been so much time—who knows how much time—why haven't they healed?

He looks at his arms. The wounds look almost fresh. Almost as if he'd just sustained them.

Why hasn't he healed? They all ask each other in hushed tones and furtive whispers and look away from his form whenever he's up on deck. They pretend they're being secretive. He pretends too.

He isn't useful to them the way he is now. He knows this.

It's not him they follow. Not now. It's not him they followed onto the Hamadryad. It's not him they wished to follow after Wyald showed them all what he really was.

They're only here because he might become useful again. They're only here because she said he might become useful, to them, once more. He might lead them somewhere else, he might make nobles of them again, he might offer them their stores and their money and their girls. It was never him they followed.

Except—

Guts eclipses the sun with his broad back, gives his eyes some rest from the blinding light of day as he walks towards him from across the deck, seawater dripping from his hair, his chin, soaking his shirt and his trousers.

"Water's nice," he says with a nasal voice—he must've swallowed salty water, breathed it in perhaps. "Wanna go down on the launch w'me?"

He comes close. So close.

* * *

At night maggots crawl out from inside the wood and feast on his festering wounds. They can never be healed. He can never go back. Even with Guts, passed out from exhaustion, next to him on the bed, the maggots come for him and ask him to choose which one will be their feast for the night and he always, invariably—

It's not him the men follow but their own dreams that he encompasses. Why then does he feel so guilty when he leads them all to their deaths?

 _Why then did you hold onto that toy, onto that hand, why then did you feel so empty and hollow?_

 _If you give up and leave your dream abandoned on the tower where you died then their struggle will have been for nothing. Is one man's life worth the deaths of countless others?_

In the morning, Guts redresses his wounds with a smile and soothing words and carries him out on deck in his arms and they watch the endless expanse of the ocean around them and it's just them. Always. Invariably.

Casca feeds him in secret. Hidden away. She too must know they wouldn't follow him anywhere if they saw the way he eats, the way her fingers enter his mouth.

* * *

There's a tournament.

They call him a king.

They twist their tongues and their mouths open wide and they use their full guts to laugh. Insulting the air with their words. They never followed because of him, only what he could be, to them.

But Guts is by him—he will not compete—and is called a king too. Two kings. And Guts is by his side.

 _If you give up now—_

Maybe he'll always be by his side.

He has lost track of time. He watches Casca dance around daggers expertly aimed never at her stomach and feels the gentle hold of Guts' hand on his. If only he could be content with just this. But he thirsts for more. He'll get bored soon enough of this placid tranquility. He knows. Maybe this would happen too if he was healthy. If he was more than mere charred, destroyed meat.

In the corner of his eye he catches the navigator watching him so he turns. Makes sure the navigator knows he's not getting out of this. He's never leaving this ship. Makes sure the navigator knows he knows. It doesn't take much to poison the minds of men who follow not out of conviction. He has to make sure the navigator knows Griffith knows it was him who told her. It was him who opened his mouth, used his voice.

At night the maggots come again. He can still feel Guts' hold on his hand and that's enough. It's enough to make it through.

* * *

On the shores of Inis Fáil with wind blowing strong and the sun sinking he floats on the gentle waves of the beach held up by Guts' arms, Guts' smile.

"Not too cold, s'it?"

He shakes his head.

Guts is up to his chest into the water but his skin is so warm against Griffith's own. His breath is so warm brushing Griffith's cheek as he helps Griffith feel the sea salt help his wounds close—if only just for a while—as he helps Griffith hold himself up in the water, move his limbs with more ease now that the water offers her own support too.

Guts laughs. It's so warm, the way his chest rumbles, the way his arms close in around Griffith.

"Ya look like a ducklin' learnin' ta swim."

Griffith wants to puff his cheeks—that'll only make Guts laugh even more—but there's some sort of tangled up thing on the pit of his stomach that signals fear, that beckons him to reach out, that screams he should push Guts away, that begs him to close the distance between them, to—to—

"Yer cold?" Guts asks. Maybe his expression has twisted itself too much. "Griffith, y'okay?"

 _If you give up now—_

Guts moves some of Griffith's hair away from his face and leaves his hand there, cupping his cheek. The way he looks at Griffith—so much concern and tenderness and maybe even fear—makes the tangled up thing twist and stretch and flex and expand. Griffith feels out of breath and full of too much air and it's a year—a whole year longer than whatever time he spent on that tower—in which they just stare at each other's eyes; Guts' warm, inviting breath on his scarred lips; Guts' warm, rough hand on his broken cheek; Guts' warm, gentle arm around his broken ribs.

"Griff—whas the matter?"

He can't swim away or push away or walk away. His entire life and being is in Guts' hands. His dream rests within those hands.

Take all of those feelings and throw them into the fire.

All of them.

Every last one of them and burn them down.

If the quiet scenes of domesticity lived aboard the Hamadryad, inside the Hamadryad's walls, aren't enough then maybe more of Guts will be. But not like this, he knows, it can't be like this. He'll get the elf or fairy or whatever it is to help and he'll see to it himself. He'll make sure of it himself. He'll do all he needs to do, whatever that is.

His face is drawn with determination, his features sharpened. He looks Guts straight in the eye, no longer swimming frantically—pathetically—in Guts' hold but serene and ready. Guts' worry eases and he's about to smile when Griffith points towards the shore to which he nods.

"Let's go then," he mutters softly.

* * *

Some of the men spend the night on the hills of Inis Fáil not wishing to spend another night subjected to the rocking waves of the sea inside the ship. Griffith spots their makeshift tents from Guts' side as they make their way towards the bonfire the next morning.

Before dawn, The Band of the Hawk gather round a fire set atop some rocks near the sea. The light casts shadows over all their faces, disfiguring their features, twisting them into unrecognizable shapes Griffith knows belong to the creatures that plead with him at night, scratching the inside of his brain with their nailless fingers, their fleshless bones.

Rickert explains the walk to Lia Fáil from the beach where they stand would take from sunrise until sunset or less and can be undertaken in a day. He'll be their guide, he says, a nervous smile betraying the unease he allows this island to infuse him with. They argue loudly for a place in the party who'll witness the parade of summer fairies. There are still two months left for the Old Year's Night, Rickert tells them, but they might be lucky.

When he says the word, lucky, their disfigured eyes are all posed on him, so he tightens his grip on Guts' forearm, and Guts poses his hand on his.

"I'll stay," Casca says, with a hint of resignation.

There's anger, he feels it in himself despite his determination, the one he'd honed more precisely after last night's swim. There's surprise and confusion. There's also understanding—strategically it's sound: she is still the most skilled after Guts, who must go with him, and they need to prepare for anything; they cannot lose their ship; and personally, it's safer, possibly. Griffith grits his teeth, nods his head.

"Are ya sure?" Judeau asks her.

Of course she is, Griffith wishes so badly he could say. She lets them question her commands and lets them treat her like she's weak all because she knows—like he does—they're too unimaginative to see her as something else. But he doesn't pity her. She's chosen this path, this style. She's dug her own hole in the ground.

Griffith wishes too that he could just name the ones who are to go with him.

There's that thing—the maggots or the slaughs or whatever those things are—in his entrails, gnawing at his organs, telling him it wouldn't matter even if he pointed at the ones he's chosen because they're no longer following his commands. They see him for the man he is now and they'll never again bother with someone who took their dreams and skinned them alive and burned them in a tower.

They settle on Pippin, Corkus, and Nikol. Corkus simply drew the largest straw.

"Should last yous four days, five if rationed," Kim gives Nikol a large knapsack with food and bottles of water.

As he does this, Casca comes to where he and Guts stands and though he can feel Guts tensing up—perhaps dreading the confrontation—she leans in to whisper into Griffith's ear.

"Should I tell him how?"

He swallows hard, takes some time before he nods slightly.

* * *

He makes the journey not on Guts' back but on Pippin's, Guts' cape wrapped around him with care. These past months the only use it's seen has been as blanket for him. It doesn't smell like Guts but then again it never really did.

Mist rises from the dew-kissed blades of grass and clover, enveloping their steps, drawing a trace towards the slopes and hills he can make out far in the horizon. The sky is overcast and Griffith is grateful for the respite from the open sea's hot humid weather. He imagines chiming bells whispering in the wind that sends chills up his spine every time Guts turns to watch him with a smile on his face. He doesn't talk much, but none of them do, as they take in their surroundings, keep their focus on the steadiness of their steps, on the way forward.

Noon finds them with hunger and tiredness seeping into their bones.

"Not much longer," Rickert says, hands on his hips.

"Let's stop a while, then," Guts says, looking at Griffith, smile on his face.

They take their time setting up. Nikol hands out their rationed meals and withstands Corkus' loud protests—"H'come that bastard Kim didn't send us any alcohol, huh? How's he think we're gonna manage?"—without issue.

He escapes all this with Guts, who carries him farther away and though he knows he could pretend the suspicion in the eyes of his men, the men who'd been following him when he served them a purpose, comes from their knowing he's no longer useful, he also knows it's not so. That suspicion, he's seen it before. It's the one they granted him when he threw himself back into battle if it meant maybe Guts would have a higher chance of survival; the one they rewarded him with when he and Guts casually walked away from them and found a clearing where to rest their weary heads by themselves; the one they gave him when he'd practically fallen off his horse, thrown away his helmet, set loose to his cape which was also discarded, in the midst of his clumsy, agitated race towards the mound of bodies, to pull them away one by one with an expression he didn't even want to consider or think about himself until under one of the mutilated bleeding corpses he found Guts, hurt, and tired, but breathing and very much alive. He cares not for their suspicion now.

Guts settles him on a soft bed of wetland—moss and clover—and looks into his eyes for a second too long. Griffith reaches out to touch his face but is too slow (his arm barely responds.)

"Uh," Guts scratches the back of his head. "Casca told me, y'know, how I gotta help ya eat?"

Griffith nods, trying his best to hold Guts' gaze, but Guts' eyes dart everywhere around the peat bog where they're settled. The quiet silence is hermetic enough, though, and the soft mist is veiling them from everything else.

It's just us, he wants to say.

Guts doesn't use utensils the way Casca does. He hand feeds Griffith, and Griffith's mouth closes over his thumb and index finger, his mouth too dry to slide over them smoothly, but almost, almost like he always thought—

"Tell me when ya need me to..."

Griffith nods again.

Unlike Casca, Guts eats at the same time as Griffith does, using those same fingers to place his own food inside his own mouth. Griffith wonders if he licks the food off them. He watches him and Guts smiles at him. He wonders if they taste like his mouth.

Guts lies down on his back once they've finished eating. Griffith watches his half lidded eyes and satisfied smile.

"We shouldn't take long, f'we wanna make it before sunset."

Griffith nods but then all the same he lets his body drop, knowing that Guts will catch him with his arms wrapped around him, hold him close against his own body, and look at him with wonder.

"Y'okay?"

He smiles. Guts smiles too. There's no mask between them.

Guts smiled like this before he left. It was that face—not the one he wore during their final duel—that haunted Griffith that day as he roamed the carefully guarded, secluded gardens of the palace, the dense forest, aimless and furious until the storm led him to the princess' chambers. It was that face that haunted Griffith in the tower where like a ghost he had to do again what gave him pain: Guts' smile before he left.

He lets himself roll out of Guts' hold and stares at the thick grey clouds vaulting the sky. The wind starts howling just before Guts gathers their things and says they must return.

* * *

They reach the green mounds of what Rickert calls the Hill of Kings just after sunset. Some sheep graze the mossy green of the formations around the rock which stands no taller than a dog, a limited platform for one man to stand on. Bored shepherds watch them walk towards the stone with the same disinterest they dispense their animals. Griffith can also make out other humans idly staring at the scenery from their stone houses just off the road.

"Lots of people come see Lia Fáil," Rickert says, "So's not a surprise to them. There used to be keepers of the grounds, wren-seers, until the Holy See declared this place nothing more than a feeding place for cattle."

Get close, the stone beckons him, speaks directly into his mind the way the maggots and the slaughs, and all other monsters do, come closer and closer and closer.

"A—aa—a," he extends his hand towards it.

Guts takes it, the hand. For a moment all he can see are Guts' eyes in his. Guts' face. All he can hear is Guts' voice, "Here," as he helps him down from Pippin's back, offers his body for his support, to inch him closer to the stone.

Get close, the stone demands, but he doesn't want it anymore. Come closer, it tells him, but he wants to do this himself. He has to.

Guts steps on the cobblestone surrounding the monolith Rickert calls Lia Fáil and nothing happens.

Griffith steps on the cobblestone surround the monolith Rickert calls Lia Fáil and the stone roars—like a beast, like an animal.

From the shrubs and short trees that surround them thousands of birds—wrens, sterlings, crows, sparrowhawks, and kestrels—fly away, crying and cawing, flapping their wings loudly. The sheep bleat in agitation and fear and the shepherds stand, immobile.

It's all just a second before Lia Fáil cracks in two, its halves all but spit out of the ground fall on their sides with loud thunks, resting on the soft green grass. The cobblestone circle surrounding it is cracked in its own right, just under Griffith's foot. He can no longer hear the stone's voice.

The shepherds run away just after the commotion is over—it lasted mere seconds—and even in the dark Griffith can make out the fear in their eyes.

They run speaking a language he can't understand and Guts watches them leave guarded, apprehensive, his hand instinctively placed above the hilt of his dagger.

"What the fuck's going on?" Corkus asks no one, looking around him as if something will have the answer.

"What was that with the rock thing?" Nikol asks Rickert.

"Lia Fáil roars when the next king steps on—"

"It didn't just roar," Corkus interrupts, "it fuckin' broke in half."

Maybe it means there'll be no need for any other king.

"I don't know what happened," Rickert says, "know s'much as you do."

"We're here for the elves, right?" Guts is still focused on their surroundings, any human that might come towards them in this field, where they've let themselves be easy targets, open as the field itself.

The best strategy is to take refuge next to one of the mounds that surround the one where the stone stood, one from which they can watch the stone and the elves if they show. Griffith points Guts to the best one, he'd pinpointed it out when they arrived.

"Griffith's right. Lessetup there, we can eat, and such."

"That's Dumha na Marbh," Rickert sounds cautious.

"S'that s'posed to mean somethin'?"

Corkus laughs at Guts.

"Used to be a sacred burial place, for the armies of kings."

Guts shrugs. "We won't be botherin' them, don't worry," he ruffles Rickert's hair.

He's changed so much since Griffith first found him. Since Griffith first—

* * *

He's shaken awake by Guts shifting in his sleep. Corkus is asleep too though he was supposed to be keeping guard. Guts had fallen asleep not long after midnight, when they saw no elves, and decided to set up shifts for the watch. He slept propped up against the shoddy tent fabric they'd brought with them, keeping it safely attached to the ground while it covers their heads, pinned by a hook across from them, held up by a spear in the center of their tiny shared space. One of his arms is wrapped around his sword, the other around Griffith, who slept with his head on Guts' shoulder. Griffith watches his sleeping face—his frown, his pursed lips, wonders what his dreams are made of—then watches the stone, still cut in half. They're entering twilight, he can tell.

Silver mist surrounds them, thicker than the one he saw earlier on the island, almost as thick as the one that trapped him and Guts that one time in the Hamadryad, lead them to their safety. It rises slowly from the grass, the trees, creeping through the shrubs, twirling itself around the broken pieces of the stone, and many voices whisper as one, at once, in different tones, what's happened here, the poets won't be happy, they won't come out of the sidhe anymore, and the voices laugh, they giggle, they travel along the mist, there's someone here, he's watching us, they're looking at Griffith he knows somehow, they're no different from the creatures of darkness that claw at his brain, there's someone here they repeat—he wants one of us to take him to Wintek sho'on to see Temaukel—yes, they say, we can hear you—he can't speak in the tongues of humans, they tell each other whispering in the wind and the mist and the songs of birds—the stone cracked under his foot he's saying, one of the voices explains the others, what were you doing, nothing bad, he wasn't doing anything bad, I saw it, you might just be our king, they laugh, or the humans' king, they laugh again, what do you mean what are we, you know what we are, don't you, they tell him, you came here to look for us, and he asks in his mind, and they reply, yes, we're faeries, we're the elves, you came here for us, and again one of the voices says, I'll take him to Temaukel, it's not that easy, the other voices whisper, inside his head and all around the island, they laugh, we can't just do that, ah, he's different, they say then, he doesn't despair like the others do. He'll do anything.

Guts wakes mere moments after sunrise, when the elf mist has lifted signaling the end of twilight. He turns his head to Griffith and sleepily mumbles "Mornin'" with a goofy smile on his face. Griffith's wish is to live in this moment forever. It's a short lived wish.

"That fuckin' moron fell asleep," Guts grumbles to himself, eyeing Corkus snoring not far from where they are.

It's fine.

Guts turns his head to face Griffith so fast it must hurt his neck. He watches Griffith's face, hidden behind the helmet, for far too long, with too much hope.

It's fine, I said, the fairy speaks again, this time more clearly.

Guts rubs his eyes.

"Whas that thing?"

A fairy, an elf, the fairy gestures with impatience, you came here for me.

"Ya found one?"

Don't talk as if I ain't here, the fairy floats over, closer to Guts.

Its voice comes from its mouth but also its body, the fields around them, the air and the space between Guts and Griffith.

"Yer—ya'll take us to Elfheim?"

Elfheim? That's an old name. Yes, I'll take you there.

Guts' eyes open wide, he looks at Griffith with so much hope in them it's painful to watch. It'll never stop being painful. Griffith can feel the ache in the deepest recesses of his mind and organs.

It's not that easy, the fairy says, crossing its arms over its body. If it were up to me I'd just take you there but, it's not that easy. They let me do it because he'll do anything, will you?

"Yes," Guts says, no hesitation. "Anything."

Ah, I see, you struggle just like him. It's not that easy to do anything, I hope you both understand.

Of course he understands, he'll wring the neck of Temaukel itself if he has to. He'll do anything. Because. Because—

There is one man whose life is worth all this.


	11. giving it up

Hardest thing to get used to was the visionscapes the fairy placed in front of his eyes. The ones Griffith pretended—in his own way—were not happening. The first to mention them was Corkus, the minute the fairy ordered them to take a different route back to the ship, back to the others.  
"It's an illusion, a trick," he'd started, half a scream, half a mumble, but the fairy had said Griffith agreed. Rickert communicated this to them as soon as the vision of the fields aflame flickered out of view. The fairy had said Guts and Griffith would do anything, they'd promised.

After they'd started on their way, it had propped itself on Guts' shoulder, a vantage point—It's comfortable—and had giggled at what Guts thought was an unspoken thought shared with Griffith, who was himself positioned on Pippin's back. Guts had trailed back, let the rest gain advantage over him, watching their backs, their swaying movements in the gray light of a rainy morning.  
"Y'can read his mind?"  
We are all of one mind, all of one breath. You're trailing too far behind, I don't wanna get lost.  
Guts felt thirsty, his throat dry, and the beating of his heart echoed through every hollow space of his bones. This could be—  
I know what you wish to say, the fairy spoke. It was at times playful like a child, mischievous and disordered, but without malice. It was at times solemn and dark, as if other voices gathered in its speech, in its thoughts, and sought to speak of things to come that spelled a different future from the one they were so intent on envisioning. That's not my own fault, the fairy'd say if it caught Guts going down that road, You thought that up yourselves.  
But even if the fairy could read his thoughts, he still would doggedly utter them. He'd never stop being who he was.  
"So y'can tell me what he wants to say?"

Darkness fell all around them—I don't think he has anything to show you—the only light emanating from the body of the fairy, from the eyes of all its kin, watching in the distance—He has nothing to show you—hidden in shadows, their shrill bouts of laughter piercing and discomforting—There is nothing he wishes for you to see. Guts drew his sword immediately, he called out for Griffith immediately, and when he turned—Nothing to show you—to face the crunching of branches under boots, he was in a field of snow, wide as the eye could see, and there was Griffith, a royal blue coat on his shoulders, embroidered in golden thread, walking—He doesn't want you to se—aimlessly with unsure steps. The sound of cannon shots behind Guts—their sound like a gust of wind hitting his back and he has nothing to show you to show for—forced him to turn away from the Griffith in the snow to find another one curled up in the corner of a dark, damp room—Nothing you must see—where they were both suddenly trapped, Griffith's body lying motionless—Don't look, don't look—surrounded by stinking, rotten water, and feces, and piss, and the festering remains of a rat's half eaten body –Look away—abandoned to maggots. A loud voice called out to him, "Guts!" and Guts turned again, again away from Griffith, and he was back in the island, back to the rainy morning, and all he carried with him as souvenir of the visions was the feeling of Griffith's hatred. Griffith's hatred of him.

"Stay close behind," Rickert reminded Guts, a low whisper through the plains.  
Guts could guess at the uncertainties, at the daunting feeling of despair behind his words, the carefully guarded awe and reverence he held for the island, laced with fear and regret.  
It's fine, the fairy chirped from Guts' shoulder. The one thing to remember is not to take anything with you.  
Guts cracked his knuckles.  
"Easy nuff," as far as he could see there was nothing but emerald grass and sharp cut rocks. On the horizon there were those bird-like things, sticking out like sore thumbs, some kind of church thing he preferred not thinking of.

They stopped at noon again to eat, Rickert shared his concerns that this new route may be longer than the one they'd taken the day before.  
"More'n a day?"  
"Not likely, but..."  
"It'll be fine."  
Trust me, trust me, the fairy sang, still perched on Guts' shoulder. I'll take you to see Temaukel, we'll all see Temaukel's face.

Guts took Griffith in his arms to get him off Pippin's back, then carried him to a spot out of the way.  
They whisper about you, he says to let them.  
"Just let'em," Guts said too, taking food out of a bag once he'd placed Griffith on a soft patch of grass. A stream ran nearby so he gathered water in his leather pouch, drank until it ran down his neck, then filled it up again for Griffith. The fairy stayed close to Griffith, floating above him, its face alternating between genuine amusement and focus, as if they were holding a conversation no one else was privy to. The churning of his stomach, as if it had turned inside out, was not unfamiliar. There'd been countless times, back in the palace of Midland, where Griffith had entertained conversations Guts could never even dream to try and enter. There was the princess. There were the princess's chambers. There were the rumors. There was that feeling of disgust and spite that blew through the snow covered fields, stagnated inside that dark room.

He sat at Griffith's side all the same, offered back the smile he was being offered by that maskless face, and started the ritual of eating together, like they'd done so many times before, in battlefields and camps and deserted abandoned homes at the side of roads. This time, this manner of eating, was no different.

His fingers, fresh out of Griffith's mouth, varied in taste each time when he took food himself. It was nothing like he thought he'd imagined it'd be, sometimes, maybe only in dreams. What he wished for more than that was—what was it? Companionship? Somewhere to belong? Someone who'd seek him out desperately, dig him out of a mountain of corpses and look relieved at the thought of his survival, look distraught at the thought of his death.

"Ya eat anything?"  
Don't need to... unless that really tastes as delicious as he thinks it does. He says I can take a bite.  
"There's no way I'd know if yer lying."  
He agrees, the fairy said while stuffing its mouth on Griffith's meal, that when there's someone else with you, even someone that can help you communicate, it just makes it harder.  
"Can it," Guts said in between bites, certainly aware that this newfound knowledge—that he despised having his thoughts said back to him aloud—wasn't something he needed now. Especially not now that when his eyes and Griffith's met there was an apologetic smile on Griffith's face to cover who knows what other emotion, who knows what kind of hatred.

He wished he'd be over it by now. All of it. Finding the elf has just fanned the flames of hope once more. The old hag's prophecies returned to his ears just in time, too, just as the stone halved itself through its thunderous roaring. He wasn't mistaken about the change in Griffith's attitude, even before they reached the stone and it broke in half because a rightful king stepped on it: there was new determination, maybe a new direction, and all Guts was doing, all he was being again, was following. He didn't even have his own—

"Y'say something?"  
Nothing. He says to tell you my name too.  
"Ya told him?"  
He was kind enough to ask.  
Guts glanced at Griffith, mockery and mischief on his face. The sun rose wherever he went.  
"What's it then?"  
Robin, the fairy seemed proud, and you may call me Puck, the merriest out of all the elves, no one else'd take you, no one else'd dare.

Griffith glanced at him once more, eyes full of laughter. Guts was unsure if he dreamt all that hatred because he wished it, as penance, as repentance. But the sting of knowledge that he wasn't, had never been, Griffith's equal, Griffith's friend, lingered underneath his light armor. His small destiny, his small dream, just to be engulfed in the thundering, roaring fires of Griffith's.

* * *

"Where are we?" Corkus asked, tiredness in his voice, once they made it through the forest Puck led them into.  
"Not far from where the others are," Rickert pointed a finger south. "I can smell the sea."  
"Ya can smell the sea anywhere in this stinkin' island, ya moron."  
He's right, Puck spoke from Guts' shoulder, covered by a piece of cloth. We're close.  
"Where the fuck are we?" Corkus addressed this to Pippin. It was for Griffith, though, that much was obvious. Under different circumstances he would've never. Once a coward.  
They can't hear me, you know?  
"H'come?"  
S'just how it is. He says it's all the better. Tell them we're at Teampall Cupán an Rí.  
"And wha's that?"  
The fairy didn't reply but all the same Guts could feel it was saying they'd see in due time. In due time.  
"Says if we get across this clearing we'll get there."  
"Yeah," Rickert nodded. "I think so too."  
"On with it, then," Corkus marched, his steps sluggish and heavy. "There better be some booze left."

Nearly a second later Guts stopped dead in his tracks. Griffith, on Pippin's back, was the only one to turn, questioning look on his face, towards him. The vision shivered out of focus as the other two became more visible.

Shisu, her hand on the head of Gambino's dog, stood at the center of the clearing, her other hand extended towards Guts as she called his name, in the same way she did—she did—when she died. Shisu, risen from the grave where Guts left roses never once, calling in a sweet voice for her son to come to her. Just once, to receive a hug. Just once to stroke his hair. Just once.  
She looked startled at the sight of Guts' sword, drawn in distrust, fear, and anxiety. Puck was no longer atop his shoulder. More importantly, where Griffith had been he was no more, and only Shisu and that damn dog that followed Gambino around, the one who watched on as Gambino was away for her last breath, were with him. When he tried to call for Griffith, call for Puck, no words came out, but Shisu walked closer, her hand still extended, away from the dog who watched them guardedly, eyed his sword with caution, like it'd done so many times before, in the past, in the past.  
He walked closer to her too, drawn by some sort of morbid desire to see if she'd dissolve once they were in reach, if her hand would still feel the same it'd felt in his early childhood as life drained out of her.  
Shisu's hand took his and deposited something there—he didn't look, too preoccupied with the thought that she was now brushing his fingers against his cheek, whispering soft words like a mother—like any mother—would if only she hadn't died. If only he hadn't cursed her.  
"What's this?" but she only had smiles for him, and the calling of his name.

"Guts?" it was Pippin uttering his name this time, mere steps away from where Shisu had stood literally a second ago.  
The others were all scattered, standing as if they too had been lost in thought or vision, around the clearing.  
Just cross the clearing and we'll be there, Puck said, almost chanting, merry laughter and humming following its words.  
"There was—" his hand still held whatever it was Shisu had handed him. Something she wanted him to have. Something she'd returned from the dead in this island where the dead can walk the plains amongst the living to give to him. For a moment, less than that, he dared himself to look. He dared himself to keep his hold on whatever it was and examine it in solitude, where no prying eyes would pose any kind of question. He also dared himself to drop it and walk away with his eyes closed until he was sure he couldn't see it anymore.

Whatever it was, he could not take it with him. He couldn't have explained.

Through another thick patch of forest they finally reached the coast, the slopes leading down to sea, where their large wooden ship—and Casca and the others and their endless trip to fucking who knew where—waited for them.

Casca was the one to spot them first, the elf told Guts: She can see me, she knows you found me, her crowded body knew even before we got here.

She ran towards them, directly towards Guts, and both their first instincts were to hold out their arms, embrace each other as if—as if there hadn't been so many things between them—so many unspoken words and stolen kisses and hands searching for each other underneath the sheets and the thought that Griffith might—that Griffith—that there was something about Griffith and him that she knew and wasn't sharing. That he dared not envision himself.

"You found it," her voice came out as if trapped under heavy weights and she spoke into his chest, before leaning back and turning towards Griffith's direction.  
Guts did too and he was surprised to find Griffith looking away. He wondered why he expected any different. Wondered why it felt like disappointment.  
I'm Puck, the fairy introduced itself, floating in front of Casca's nose as she strained her eyesight to focus on its face.

Gaston and the other raiders came closer too, wonder on their faces though Puck assured Guts they couldn't see it.  
"S'it true? Ya found one?"  
"We—"  
"What in—"

Guts had been too distracted to notice what was happening until Corkus' shrieks scared away some birds that were lounging on the rocks, the flapping of their wings threatening to put out the fires the Band of the Hawk had lit over rocks. He looked in the direction the raider who'd apparently seen what was happening was looking in.

"Fuck's going on?" Riguel ran by them to where Corkus lie on the ground, holding his left wrist with his right hand, bellowing and crying as the clothes on his back dissolved in what looked like acid fire.

Guts ran too, towards Griffith, helped him off Pippin's back, lent his arm in support as they both stood, entering the circle that had quickly formed around Corkus. Guts grit his teeth at the sight of Griffith's stare behind the mask, belying the hollow sternness needed for a general who has to watch his subordinates die.

That was what they were all doing, after all, watching the blood that had started seeping out of Corkus' eyes, his nose, his mouth, and the steam—it smelled of charred meat and excretions—rising from his left hand, still in a fist, still held by his right with so much strength Guts thought he might rip the whole hand off.

The men crowded around, some brought over water from the sea, others cloths. Emil ran to the ship to retrieve his kit with bandages and cleansing alcohol. Only Casca, Rickert, Judeau, Griffith and Guts stood still, almost frozen, watching the gruesome scene—Corkus' skin peeling itself off, starting by his hand and running down his arm, flakes of his hair falling off with every convulsion of his body which was starting to bloat, pustulating and purple blue.

Good to see you again, Puck said in a joyful tone, as if it wasn't witnessing what the others were seeing. I see you're no longer with the circus.  
"Why's this happening?" Judeau asked Puck since he'd been the one addressed.  
He took something from the island. Máel Dúin said not to so long ago, so long ago. I warned them.  
Guts stared at his own hand, felt the absence of whatever it was that Shisu handed him.  
"Make it stop."  
I'm free now, Judeau, as are you. I don't have to do anything I have no wish to.  
"Make it stop," Casca whispered, looking away from Corkus' pleading face, his muscles—tendons and nerves and bloody veins exposed under the peeled off skin, like a juicy red fruit about to burst, seeping a thick viscous liquid—life itself. "He'll die."  
He shouldn't have taken it. It's the price you pay. He agrees.  
Rickert covered his eyes and Judeau looked at Guts but both him and Casca looked at Griffith, who no longer watched Corkus' death throes but the horizon, far out over the sea.  
We have a long journey ahead of us. And no use for those who don't understand.

Mist, not unlike the one they'd seen when the winds returned to them, rose from the sea, creeped up over the beach and the rocks and enveloped them—just them, the ones, Guts gathered, who could see the fairy—and with mist came the voices, all over, all at once, everywhere—just like it'd been with the Skull Knight, with Zodd, with Wyald, with that old hag, with that creature that'd risen from the depths of the ocean. Guts wanted to throw up and he wanted to understand but there was something beyond him, beyond all of them, in their midst. Griffith did not look scared so he held on, grip on his sword, trusting Griffith at least understood. He does, the voices said, he'll do anything, you said you would too. We're here to see you off, bid you bring interesting tidings from your journey, and curse you—"Curse us?"—Yes, we hope you'll find what you're looking for, we'll curse you with that, with finding it—"How's that a curse?"—It's not a curse, pay no mind, Don't interrupt, Puck, I'm going because I dare, You're going because you're curious to see the face of Temaukel yourself, but you already have many times, We are all of one mind, Please leave the body to us, We'll find burial with the armies of kings, It's proper, It's fated.

The mist lifted for them to find only Corkus' hand left behind, still clutching tightly to whatever it was he had taken from that clearing.

"What the fuck happened?" Riguel pushed Guts, hard, on his left shoulder. The force was enough to shake Griffith's weight, bring his body down with a distinct crunch and thud.  
"Fuck's wrong with you?" Guts hesitated between helping Griffith back up, checking for injuries, or grabbing Riguel by the throat but his body—hand around Riguel's throat—made the choice for him.

When Casca and Judeau closed in on Griffith, to lend their own hands, Guts grit his teeth, snarled through them as if he'd taken too much on his shoulders already, "Don't touch him!", and he threw Riguel back—he landed on a rock, sliced his ankle on its edge—then turned to Griffith and the tenderness, the softness of his touch surprised even himself. Was this the thought he'd been running away from? Was it here? Was it in the way Griffith's expression oscillated between warm kindness and open surprise?

"Are you alright?" Guts tried with a soft voice but Riguel's was far louder, angrier.  
"My commander's just fuckin died! We all watched 'im!" his speech is garbled, due to the injury perhaps.  
Your commander is Griffith, Puck says full of mirth. That's what you want me to tell him, huh big guy? He can't see me though.  
"Someone explain what's going on," Gaston chimes in from behind Guts. He can't see his face.  
"T'was the fairies," Casca says. "They took his body. Corkus stole from them."  
Not us, the island.  
"Corkus ain't a thief—"  
Was, Puck shrugged its shoulders. I didn't say he was, he still broke the rule.  
"Emil, take a look at Riguel's leg."  
Emil, just recently back from the ship, looked around, as if expecting, as they all were, to find Corkus somewhere.  
"After you're done take him to the ship." Casca was still staring at Corkus' hand. She'd been at it since Guts barked at her not to go near Griffith, not to touch him. He seemed to recall once their roles had been inverted. He seemed to recall once she had hated the idea of his closeness to Griffith enough to wish him dead. He seemed to recall there was something underneath his own annoyance at her that shimmered, that shone, that warmed. "That's an order," she said when she noticed Emil was hesitating still. "We'll give the hand burial."  
"'Fore you go," Guts raised his voice to call Emil's attention, "hand me some a yer bandages, some alcohol too."  
"Why?" it was Casca who asked.  
"Nothin' serious," at least he knew his body could shield Griffith's broken arm from the view of the others, the jutting bone, the fresh blood staining his bandages, staining Guts' cape wrapped around him.

Guts had repositioned his own bones, and other people's, countless times before. None of them ever looked as frail as Griffith did now.  
"You in pain?"  
He's been through worse.  
"He ask ya to say that?"  
No, Puck shrugged, but—  
"Then fuck off."

Griffith was smiling as he watched the creature float away. Guts worked at his arm, bandaging it so the bone would heal in time, after he disinfected the wound.

"If ya don't think it's a bad omen," Guts said, moved by something he couldn't begin to recall, "then it isn't. Doesn't hafta be."

* * *

Some of the men didn't follow back to the ship. He heard of this hours later, when Rickert and Casca came to Griffith's quarters, bringing dinner for that night. By that time, Puck had already built a nest in an empty oil lamp hanging above the desk in the quarters—It's not a nest, I'm not a bird—and Griffith's arm was held up by a makeshift sling as he rested in his chair.

"What're we gonna do?"  
"Corkus wasn't exactly adored, but had regardless been around long enough. Longer than you."  
"Hm. He knew the risks."  
"He wanted to leave."  
"He coulda," Casca told Rickert, "at any time. No one's here against their will."  
"Judeau wants to speak to you. And Griffith."  
"Not now. After the meal."  
"You gonna feed him?" Casca looked between him and Griffith, her hand hovering above the tray with food.  
"I know how to. Ya should talk to 'em, if they wanna. We need men to go with us."

Casca looked like there was something else she wanted to say but kept her mouth shut. She turned on her heels and walked out of the room. Guts, and Griffith too, Guts could tell, turned their eyes to Rickert, expecting he'd follow.

"Did you see something? At the clearing?"  
Griffith looked away from Rickert. He'd aimed his question at Guts anyway, Guts figured. Maybe that was why.  
"I dunno. Guess so. Didn't take nothin'."  
"What if—" but Rickert didn't finish his sentence for he spotted Puck in its nest, glowing faintly. He lowered his voice. "What if it was a test?"

Didn't really matter how low he said this, the fairy could enter their minds at will, it could see what their thoughts were made of. Puck didn't speak, though, didn't come out of its nest. And what if it was a test? So what if it was a test? They were here, weren't they? Inside the ship, on their way. This was why they'd taken to sea.

"Pay it no mind, kid. Go see if Casca needs help."

Perhaps they thought the wooden door was thick enough, perhaps they wanted them to hear. Perhaps Puck itself was lending a hand. But behind the quarters' doors Guts could hear Rickert and Casca, speaking in hushed tones, raspy and hurriedly. Not loud enough for Guts to catch every one of their words, but enough for choice ones to slip through. They spoke of the navigator, of his suspicions, they spoke of Griffith, of the hills where they'd found the elves, they spoke of Corkus' death, its unfathomable nature. They spoke of choices. They spoke of the unknown in things to come.

"Aa—aa," Griffith called to him, away from what was going on behind the door. At the same time, Guts could hear footsteps walking in the opposite direction.

"Yer right, must be hungry too," Guts set out their meals, side by side. "Haven't had a chance to say this, y'know, but—s'good that we found this thing," he pointed towards the lamp with his thumb. "We'll get there to where that Timkal thing is, we'll be back, it'll be soon."

For the first time since they'd rescued Griffith from that dark, damp tower where he'd rested, curled up in stinking, rotten water, and hated Guts for what he did—Guts could feel it again, recognized it again—when he said the word, soon, soon, Guts knew he was over it. Over saying soon. Over wishing they'd be somewhere else, soon, waiting for an exit, an answer, a rescue.

For the first time—the thought hit him like a blow to the face, like Griffith slicing his shoulder through and through with his sword, like a gust of wind knocking the air out of his lungs—he knew he deserved that hatred. He knew he'd been the cause. He knew there were things to be done.

For the first time since he'd met Griffith and had promised his life to him—You can make me your soldier or your whore and you can decide where and when I'll die—he didn't hesitate or tremble or feel the need to hide behind the shy red hot feeling of inadequacy that followed him everywhere so long as he wasn't holding his sword.

There wasn't any soon, they were here now.


	12. writing them like that

Riguel was the second of them to die on the island. Third if she counted the navigator, which she didn't.

The morning after Corkus' death, search parties were arranged once it was certain Riguel's whereabouts had been unknown since the night before. Pippin's group returned just after noon, carrying Riguel's body in a tattered blanket covered in dead weeds. It was far too decomposed for just one night on a cold island, but they left the thought untouched, unspoken, and buried Riguel next to Corkus' hand, marked the spot with a smooth white rock.

Griffith and Guts watched over the burial from a distance. Griffith's hair had grown enough to almost fall upon his shoulders, a couple of strands curled, resting on the thin frame, his sharp bones visible under the bandages and the cape. Casca often thought about evening out the locks of hair that formed his bangs when she fed him but was unable to voice the thought out of caution. Those in charge of his care—her, Guts, Judeau, Pippin—took turns to wash his hair and observe its growth even if it were for no reason—Guts had said at least—considering Griffith only took off his mask in the privacy of his quarters, for his meals, for the change of bandages, for every action he couldn't let the others witness.

He wasn't wearing it then, though. As he stood by Guts' side against the overcast skies above the island, eyes on the men digging the grave. There was no mask to cover the wounds, the scars on his face. There was no mask to disguise the cold strength of his fixed stare. There was no mask to shield him from the questioning eyes of the men.

* * *

A grave silence fell on the deck as she stood there, shivering in the cold mist lifted from the sea. She was alone after lighting the fires of the torches on deck. Griffith, Guts and the elf had returned to Griffith's quarters, a place from where, it seemed to her, she had been slowly driven out. Time spent there reduced mostly to meals, which now Guts had offered—asked, ordered—to take care of. How far she was from the person who'd watched Guts and Griffith reading the former captain's logs and thought things hadn't changed one bit between them. That there was a chance to return to what they'd once been. The echo of a crowded room inside her reminded her it wasn't so. It could've never been.

After the burial, shortly before nightfall, the men all retired to the forecastle. Judeau, Pippin, and herself had collected whatever implements were used to set up temporary camp on the island they were all eager to leave. Now, on deck, she couldn't even hear the usual rumor of their laughter, their banter, their drunkenness. Just the low rumble of waves crashing against the hull. There was no one left on the island and they would sail with the morning winds, away from it and in the direction the elf pointed, but she was entranced watching the lights dancing on the cliffs, like spirit-fires, like stars come down to earth, to the rhythm of gentle waves.

"Eerie when it's so quiet, huh?"

Casca turned to find Judeau, strand of straw between his teeth, bandage still in place across his chest. He was leaning against the main mast, right behind her. Could've been there for long and she would've been non the wiser.

"Lot has happened."  
"A lot will still happen."  
"What d'ya mean?" Dread settled in her stomach.  
"Remember how it was? After Wyald showed us Griffith's body?"  
"I—" Casca watched the knots on the wooden planks and tried squinting away those daunting memories.

There had been the foreboding feeling of the end, punctuated only by winds blowing strong and then dying down without any fanfare. They had all shared in the silent knowledge that their battle as the White Hawks was over. That Griffith's life, dream, path, usefulness, was over and there was no turning back.

"There was no solution, nowhere left to go. I was prepared to—"  
"You gave us a solution, you mentioned the elf," she said you in a way that was accusatory. He'd been the one.  
"Two of the men died cause of them. D'you really think we can trust the elves?"  
"Wha—who else would ya trust?"  
"Myself."  
"Is this what you went to tell 'em, last night after Corkus' death?"  
"Among other things."

She paused, expecting him to share what had transpired the night before, when Judeau met with Griffith and Guts and the elf but to no avail.

"What happened? What did you tell him?"  
"We endured a life of thieves and outlaws, hidin' and runnin' and barely scrapin' by, cause we thought we'd find Griffith at the end of it. We decided to take this ship and go along with you because you, our commander, told us to. Cause we thought again at the end of it we'd find Griffith."  
"What's this about?" Again he was doing that, again he was answering her questions with questions, setting her aside, asking her to stand on the brink of an answer he never gave clearly.  
"Corkus and Riguel died for no good reason. Braid and Olin died cause a lack of water."  
"We—we're in battle, here, ya know that, know the risks. Gave our lives and our dreams to Griffith when we joined his army, ain't that it? S'what happens when you fight."  
"No," Judeau shook his head, as if the very word hurt him, as if the thought that this was something else did.  
"What?"  
"They didn't die on a battlefield."  
"The men talked to ya?"

She wasn't blind. She knew the men had been listening to the navigator. She knew the men's patience was running short, no matter how merry they acted when given the chance. She knew, too, that their trust on Griffith wore thin with each passing day, the fire of their shared dream flickering, smaller each day. Their eyes on watching Corkus' death all seemed to want to place the blame on him.

"You're his man on the outside, but you're still that, on the outside, so they trust you. They trust you to be their commander, their general now that he's—"  
"Griffith's the general," her tone was getting louder, too loud. She repeated the sentence in a whisper, wary that somehow Griffith could hear. "I ain't—"  
"How are the men supposed to trust us, to trust the elves, if they can't even see 'em?" Judeau waited, maybe for a reply from her, which didn't come. "Two men just died and we got nothin' to show for it, not to 'em. They can't see. Hear them out, will ya? Maybe ya can help 'em."

There was nothing in Judeau's tone that indicated which way the chips'd fall. Either he honestly wished she'd be able to sway the men's opinions, to rouse them all up again into continuing on this journey until they saw it through to the end, whatever that was, or he was counting on her own doubts, the seed of them forming abstractly in the depths of her, along with someone else, to understand the men's complaints and lead them away from the island, away from the ship, away from Griffith.

* * *

Some of the men stood up when she climbed down the stairs into the forecastle. They had taken their places at their hammocks, their tables, their chairs, but some stood as if her presence were a solemn call. As if they weren't the comrades they'd once been. Maybe she never was one of them, though.

"Judeau tells me ya wanna talk."

A couple of them cleaned their throats but no one actually spoke. Casca noticed at this point that Rickert wasn't there, neither was Kim. They were probably in the galley, perhaps unaware of this meeting, preparing a meal they might never get to serve. The collective silence among the men, as well as their eyes, fixed on each other and then looking away, made the time passing by all the more stark.

"If there's nothin', I'll be leavin'."  
"Commander," Sam started. He uttered the word unlike he used to before the rescue—with hesitation, almost mockery, unforgiving of the time she'd thwarted his and Corkus and Riguel's attack on the newcomer Guts—he said it firmly, as if he believed. "Everyone in our unit is now gone."  
At his side, Mislav, arms crossed, nodded solemnly.  
"I understand, and I'm sorry, but—"  
"They're gone and nothin's changed fer us."  
Other voices joined in to say their yeses.  
"Yer sayin' ya found the elves but nothin's changed fer me, or fer anyone here. Not even fer those up there," he tilted his head to signal in the direction of Griffith's quarters. "He's still the same, broken."  
"That's what we're here to fix."  
"Nothin's changed," Sam insisted "'Cept that Corkus and Riguel are dead."  
"S'his fault, all of it," the voice came from the back of the room. It was Nikol, wringing his hands in front of his chest, as if he didn't really mean to say the words he'd been biting back for however long. "S'his fault we were outlaws, his fault we lost everythin', innit? He went an' fucked the princess—"  
"That's just a rumor!"  
"Casca's right," Emil spoke up. "We don't know that for sure."  
"Yer fools if ya think they'd hunt us down like dogs—imprison him for so long—if it wasn't cause a that."  
Some men nodded, some grunted their agreement.  
"They just wanted to get rid of us—"  
More grunting, this too was plausible.  
"We all know he fucked the princess," Nikol said, looking around the room. Most men looked down and away, possibly because they agreed and were still too polite to deny it. "And fucked us all over with that. Braid heard the stable boys talk."  
"Braid isn't here to confirm that."  
"An' that's also his fault, innit?"

The voices started mixing together, loud or soft, deep or high, and it was almost as if they'd gone back to normal, talking over each other.

"Quiet!" Casca's voice cut in. They at least still stood to attention to her orders. She wondered how long they would. "No one here has died that did not know what was to happen. Didn't y'all accept to follow Griffith's orders, to fight with him in battle?"  
"Tha's horseshit, an' ya know it. None a us are here to die like they died, like Corkus and Riguel. The truth is..."  
Casca impatiently waited for Sam to finish his words. Nikol did it for him, though.  
"Truth is he's no longer the one we were willing to give our lives for. Now, he's just a man. A broken one at that."

A pang of pain shot through Casca's temple, pierced her brain through and through. Hadn't she thought the exact same thing when she'd witnessed Griffith's small, weak hands for the first time after the rescue? Didn't she think this every single time she had to force herself to feed him—him who had no tongue and could not speak and could barely lift a spoon. Through it all she kept going back to a time, a couple years after Guts joined them, when he'd told her Griffith was just a man. When he'd said he knew he was just a man—she'd been yelling at him because men can't live only on dreams, they need other things, a companion, a lov—and Guts'd said he knew that. He'd said he knew that very well.

She wondered now if she ever did. If any of them did. Even after witnessing the blood on his fingers when she found Griffith in the river the night after she saw him with that man she somehow convinced herself the weight on his shoulders was something he could carry. She somehow convinced herself the burden of hers, and everyone else's dreams, was light enough for Griffith, who was so much more than just a man.

She'd felt it back then too, when Judeau confirmed what Wyald had claimed about Griffith's state: he was no longer useful. He was no longer someone they could rely on. All in all, she couldn't find it in herself to blame the men, to be angry at them, to reject their worries and complaints.

Griffith, whatever he'd done after Guts abandoned them that snowy morning, had thrown away everything they'd worked so hard for without once stopping to think about the people who'd been following him that far. At that moment, he hadn't been the General of the Band of the Hawk, he'd been just a man, doing something as if the consequences were to affect only him. And none of them had ever agreed to follow a man.

"D'you all agree?"

No one looked her in the eye, but they all nodded slowly. This journey had cost them months and lives and all they had to show for it was the loss of more of their members. She'd seen the elf, heard its voice, heard it promise it'd lead them to where they needed to be. But the men hadn't. They were tired of chasing empty dreams.

"I said I'd listen, I can't say any action'll be taken after what you tell me now, but I'd like to ask either way. What d'you propose we do?" Casca directed this question at Judeau, knowing that if he'd gone as far as talking to Griffith about it, he'd at least have formed a plan, or mapped out something that'd keep the men from mutiny but respected their wishes all the same.  
"We have a ship," Judeau started. "As good as a country. Thieves aren't any different from pirates 'cept for the territory they cover."  
"S'that your proposal? For everyone?"  
"The raiders will follow Captain Guts," Gaston said. He'd been quiet the whole time so Casca suspected he'd be the one to bring Guts up, Guts whose position was as unstable as anyone else's and yet was firmly rooted to Griffith's side. "He's not a Hawk, he left, before all this happened. We'll go with him."  
From the other corner of the room, Mislav scoffed. "What're ya blind? He's always been Griffith's lapdog, or his who—"  
In seconds, Gaston was at Mislav's neck, all his demure, polite personality, the one he'd use in his tailor shop, gone in favor of the one of the raider's second in command.  
"Watch whatcher gonna say," his voice was easy and soft, made all the more threatening by its temperance.  
"Gaston," Nikol placed a soothing hand on Gaston's shoulder, making him immediately let go of Sam. "It ain't my place to say but—"  
Gaston turned to him, that same look on his face, like the implications of the words Nikol would utter were too wretched a thought. Casca almost felt sorry for him. Corkus and his men used to pass the time entertaining notions about Griffith and Guts, meant as insults for both of them, who might never had seen it that way.  
"Listen, ya said ya'd follow the Captain, but I'm'fraid I won't be doin' that. I don't think the Captain'll be leavin'. He sees his battles to the end."  
"Then—"  
"Some a the raiders might stick around with the Captain, I know. I ain't one a them."

Casca examined the face of all of them. She imagined more than a couple would stay, faithful to Griffith to the very end but too weak to let their comrades know.

"I see. So you'd all like leavin'. 'Cept there's only one ship, can't split it up."  
"We know," Judeau said, shrugging his shoulders as if this was just a card game.  
"An' I said I'd listen, not that anythin'd come of this."  
"Somethin' has to be done, Commander," Nikol raised his voice.  
"If things stay the same..." Sam said, a vague threat on his lips.  
"Gimme some time," she knew she was just echoing the words she'd said before, right after the rescue, right after Wyald's defeat. "There's much to think about."  
"We waited long enough," Mislav said. He too echoed words Corkus had uttered before.  
"Ya can wait some more. Won't be nearly as long. S'better if we leave the island as planned, before anythin' else. Less ya wanna stay here."

None of them replied.

* * *

Up on deck, some of the lit torches had gone out. She was relighting them when Judeau approached her again, hands in his pockets. Before he had a chance to talk she took her chances.

"Ya said it was like that time, after Wyald, yeah?" She didn't wait for him to confirm. "S'nothin' like that, ya know that. They still trusted him then. Now all they do is blame him."  
"Can ya really say they're wrong? They lost everythin' an' keep losin' whatever's left."  
"Anythin' we lost we had cause of Griffith."  
"Y'know Gaston had his shop, yeah? We were knighted, in that ceremony. D'ya ever think that'd happen? Sure, we knew Griffith was somethin' else, and we followed, but to actually be there, to have it in your hands. Was enough for most of us, y'know? More than we ever dared think."  
"I get it."  
"Only wasn't enough for those two. They couldn't be happy with it."  
"They're different."  
"If he'd been less greedy, we wouldn't be in this situation, y'know?"  
"Who do you mean?"  
"Whatever it was we got as the White Phoenix, whatever happiness we all had, it wasn't enough for them."  
Casca rubbed her stomach lightly.  
"The dead keep pilin' up, Casca. Why d'ya think they'll be content now? What's gonna change? Sooner or later, it won't be enough."  
"I promised I'd get him there. I promised him."  
"Who do you mean?" his words were light, a joke. He even smiled when he said them. That made it worse. "Say ya get Griffith all healthy, back to what he was, and the price for that s'just the deaths we've paid so far. Ya think that'll be it? He'll be lookin' for what he's always been lookin' for soon as he can stand again."  
"Thought that was the point. Isn't that why we came here? To follow him again?"  
"Ya saw them down there yerself. Without someone to rely on they need someone to blame," he shook his head and then added, as if correcting himself. "We do. Mislav's right, we've waited too long."  
"What'd ya have me do?" She was losing her patience. All this talk seemed to go in circles. Vague threats and announcements of walking away that, like Corkus', would never materialize, probably.  
"Griffith always stood at a distance. Was alright cause he was our General, he was leading us, we were watching his back and following. It had to be so, for him and for us, I too can understand simple military tactics. Most generals never even meet their subordinates, much less share their food, their drinks."  
"Where're ya goin' with this?"  
"That hasn't changed. It shoulda cause he isn't the one givin' out the orders, he can't. But it hasn't changed."

Casca crossed her arms around her stomach, watched her feet firmly planted on the wooden deck.

"We put up with losin' it all cause we'd get Griffith back. And we put up with sailin' cause we'd get Griffith back. But we've been losin' more—and I don't mean just the dead, I mean everythin' else that's happened since we left land. It's like some kinda horrible fate awaits us, no matter what we do, where we go. And there's no guarantee we'll get Griffith back, even if we keep on like this. An' spite all this, it hasn't changed. He's off on his own, with Guts, they're always away."

She found herself kicking at some invisible pebble, shuffling her feet for the hell of it.

"Ya think it'll change, once we get him back, if we get 'im back? S'not just us, s'not just you ya gotta worry about now, is it? Would ya be okay with that?"

She uncrossed her arms in a sudden movement which had him backing up a step.

"I'll worry about that myself, Judeau. Ya worry about what we'll do about this, once we're outta here."

She started walking away, in the direction of her quarters—the ones shared with Guts, the ones close to Griffith's—but stopped in her tracks, half because she had something else to say. Half because she dreaded the closed space of those quarters now, where she'd spent most of her time alone, waiting for a sign that the man who slept beside her very rarely would hold her hand under the covers when she reached out. Would actually be there when she did. She'd been the one to push him away—her reasons were solid and sound and she stood by them—but the plan was to draw him back to her, not because of the absence of Griffith but in spite of his presence, and there'd been no progress.

"If the problem's Griffith not bein' closer to the men, guess it's not as serious as I'd thought."  
"I don't think ya—"  
"I said I needed time to make somethin' of this. I ain't blind, I know the men are restless, I know they need somethin' we won't be findin' any time soon. But it ain't bein' friends with Griffith that'll sooth their anger. They'll tear him apart if they see, even more than they already have, that he's just a man. That maybe he's always been just a man, and he's had us all fooled all this time."  
"It's hard to forget he's still only a man as long as Guts is by his side. As long as those of us who witnessed their duel are still here," Judeau said, not entirely at her, but at a distant point beyond the dark skies and waves around them.

She didn't get a chance to reply.

Rickert and Kim emerged from the galley, carrying the food they all had grown accustomed to sharing on deck. All but Griffith and the one feeding him, who'd up to now been her. All but Guts, who'd eat whenever he could, however he could, always on watch, always swinging his damn sword, awaiting the moment he'd promised to help Griffith reach, when the Elf King would heal his wounds and his soul and he'd return to them the same as he ever was.

"M-miss Casca?" Rickert hesitated for a second, perhaps sensing the confused mixture of emotions settling inside her. "The meal is ready," his voice still unsure, like a question.  
"Thank you, Rickert. I'll go tell the General."


	13. living in the midnight hour

Dreams are a realm the fairy cannot enter. It sleeps too, perhaps it dreams dreams of its own, images Griffith can't fathom. But the respite—the knowledge that this scenery will remain untouched, unexplored by the fairy who entertains itself traversing through his memories and thoughts—is enough. And maybe his mind is aware, and shows him such things because of it. Or maybe his mind is just being aided by beings and creatures much like the fairy, but wholly different. By the same maggots who feast on his flesh, or the sluagh, that crowd of dead rejected by gods and demons and the earth alike. And so he accepts what is being said, listens to it with the clarity of wakefulness, with the lucidity of a restful mind.

There is a way to do all this without any of them.

There is a way to open all the doors to the castle lower every bridge without their hands.

He keeps a memory of this thought shut deep inside his mind once he wakes to find Guts still sound asleep by his side. He shields it from the prying of eyes of Puck, who hovers over Guts' body like a child would a mother if it could fly, who watches him from the other side of Guts with the smile of a sphinx, teeming with riddles, always ready to offer no consolation.

He yearns for it too, Puck says holding its head in its hands. Just say the words.

Griffith replies.

As it was back in the Hill of Kings, by the mound where the armies were buried, he doesn't think the words one by one. They come to him in colors, in images, they find their way to Puck in streams of light, in flickering fires, in crackling winds. He hasn't uttered a real word in so long he no longer feels the need to think them. Language escapes him and with it the stiff thought of humanity, the constraints and chains that bind men to law, humankind to reality.

He is the Word. But if Griffith goes beyond the Word then not even He can oppose him.

It will take you far from him, too, Puck says. When he speaks, his voice is heard aloud. If Guts were to wake he'd hear half of the conversation and maybe he'd wonder. Who is it that Griffith so fears to lose. Maybe he already knows.

Without the language of humans, as you are now, you'll slip farther away from him. Puck finds it all entertaining.

The implication being that Griffith isn't even one of the poets in the sidhe, the ones who won't return now that Lia Fáil is broken because no more kings will ever come after him. And only the poets can use words to create worlds. Language abandoned Griffith long before his tongue was torn clean off his mouth with rusty pliers and dull blades, abandoned him when first he'd been unable to speak to Guts with words and had let the wind howling in the fields be the sound bridging them, when he'd let the rumors of the battlefield, the clanging of swords, the galloping of horses, whisper of his feelings into Guts' ear, when he'd let the vacant hollow of the dead of night creep into Guts' tent as he slept curled up with his sword and let him know Griffith was—Griffith wanted—Griffith would always be.

Maybe words have only just stood in between you two, Puck laughs. Loudly enough to wake Guts, who's lost in the confusing shores of wakefulness, and doesn't fully realize where he is until he finds Griffith's eyes—his heart beats twice to make up for a time it's stopped when their eyes meet and Griffith wishes all too strongly, not with words but with images and desire and the fiery green of will, that it'd stop beating for him. That it'd stop reacting.

"Mornin'," Guts mumbles, his speech slurred with the murky waters of sleep, voice thick with the first light of morning.

It isn't that which Griffith hears but the way he scratches his lower stomach, lifting the thin fabric of his garment distractedly with eyes closed, as if beckoning his soul's return to his body through the navel.

Beyond where they lay exists a world drowned in silence and sound, shaded in hues of orange and violet, where this domestic scene repeats itself over and over. Over and over he wakes to find Guts in his bed, like he would a wife, and Guts wakes to find him, like he would—like he would her. There, Guts' motions are the same as here, except when he's fully awake, his soul resting within himself once more, he props himself up on one arm and leans over Griffith, places his mouth on Griffith's mouth, his smile upon Griffith's, and says "Mornin'" on a shared breath, dry kissed lips that draw each other, create each other with each touch, with every contact. There, language evades Griffith as well but he thinks it, doesn't push it away, and when he looks about himself, at the misery they've gathered together—his helplessness, his broken bones, his wounds that will not heal no matter how much time passes—it's not despair he finds. There is no crown and no castle and no backstreets in that world and nothing exists beyond the room with the bed they share every night. In that bed there is no pain, anger or sorrow and he's not aching for the cinders on the chimney to crackle, sparks flying, catch sheets and curtains in their paths, burn everything and with them his skin, his eyeballs, his bones. In that world he wants for nothing and cannot find it in himself to even try. In that world it's Guts who will choose how and when he will die. In that world he'll gladly let Guts sink his sword deep in his chest, thank him for it.

There is a way to do all this without giving up, Puck tells him, splintering the world of orange and violet, ripping its remains in half. But it's not easy to do all it takes.

Griffith understands.

The visions in his head open up a path of labyrinthine stairwells going nowhere and everywhere, winding and twisting and coiling around each other, and their destination, like his, is the keys to the kingdom. A place human language has never entered and no man who spoke it ever seen.

The decision was made when he knew there was someone whose life was worth all countless deaths. Among the millions of comrades. It was made before then, maybe.

If there is a way to do all this and keep one life by his side, he knows what life he'll keep. He'll slay whomever he has to slay. He'll go beyond the Word and farther. For there is one life.

Would that be doing all it takes?  
"Whassat s'posed ta mean?"  
I'm just thinking out loud, Puck laughs. When are we eating?  
"Thought ya said ya didn't need ta eat."  
He likes the food. I like eating when you feed him.  
"Are ya hungry?" Guts asks him, his eyes soft and warm.  
Griffith looks out the window, to the openness of the sea. Even if he doesn't reply he's sure Guts will know the answer.

* * *

Guts returns with breakfast and a washed face. The crease between his eyebrows has deepened and Griffith knows a talk will soon follow. If only Guts could surrender language too, if only he too could escape it. Sometimes he comes close to it.

He talks while they eat. Guts' words come out around chewed food and licking of fingers. Griffith wishes he'd understand they say more in the way they each lick Guts' fingers than in anything their tongues could ever utter.

"'Bout what Judeau said. Uh, when she gave me this stuff, Casca told me she talked ta them too." He leaves a pause where maybe Griffith would speak. Maybe he waits for Puck to state his thoughts, but nothing will come out. "She didn't say 'sactly what it was. But I—I dunno. Think it's—The stuff with Corkus and Riguel. They're all scared, yeah?"  
This time Puck did speak, he repeated what he'd said before, translating Griffith's feelings as he looked onto the horizon extended before him. We have a long journey ahead of us. And no use for those who don't understand.  
"Yeah. I get it."  
I've seen their thoughts, they echo each other in uninteresting ways, they lack imagination. They fear the consequences, they fear he doesn't fear them.

Maybe Guts wanted to ask, maybe he did ask, inside his mind, but even before he posed the question they were back on that hill somewhen so long ago, and his hands where on Guts' face, and there was blood streaming down both of them. Now you are mine comes in a voice that was both his and the gods', the demons', the earth's, everything at once. A vision that flickered like a dying flame and quickly led them back to the Hamadryad's captain's quarters, his quarters.

That is the answer then, to Guts' unspoken question.  
Does he fear the consequences? The pile of dead? Is he allowed to?  
Take these lives and make them your own, pile them up to your own dream, lead us above our dwelling places, above the earth where we'll rot.

Guts recoils once the vision is done. He always tries to make himself smaller when they share the bed, a remnant of a time when he possibly was told he took up too much space, he didn't deserve all that space just to himself, but he recoils even more now, as if trying to disappear.

Griffith tries reaching out to him but his arm is still broken. His other arm still too weak. All he has left is the strength of his will, the desire to bend reality, to shape the world around himself. At least it makes Guts look back at him, eyes no longer soft and warm, but hard and cold.

"Griffith, what uh what happened that day?"

That day is snow falling on pines, a sheet blanketing the expanse of a castle not his own, making it appear endless. That day is a white thick mist lifted above the snow under his feet covering everything, disfiguring all in sight, and dark shapes veiled behind it, with broad backs hunched and tired, coming back to him, leaving no traces in the snow this time, because this time they're coming back for good. That day is waiting for the shadows in the mist to reach him, break through the impenetrable silence of falling snow and find him ready to forgive, to welcome back, before realizing they're just trees, rooted on the ground and unmoving. That day is each flake posing itself on a leaf like kisses never lived, sleepy music from the outer spheres mocking the transparency of his dream, how easy it is lost. That day is fire consuming all words and thoughts and feelings and dreams, razing the landscape until nothing was left but the dying sun.

"Hey why ya cryin'?"  
Me? Ah, Puck brings a finger up to its eyes, then tastes the tears streaming down its cheek with its tongue. I didn't realize, it was so cold out there. All that's left to say it's the journey is long. Distant days are past.

Guts knots his eyebrows but it's not Puck he frowns at, it's Griffith. Griffith holds his gaze for a second and the vision is clear—if Guts poses his lips on his like snowflakes on leaves then there'll never be any need for a tongue Guts's own will be enough for them both—and disintegrates once he smiles.

Guts doesn't question it even though he looks as if he wished to, and slowly rises from the bed, collects the dishes, and helps Griffith out from between the sheets and into the large wooden tub Pippin places in his room every morning. At first Guts would pick his body up and place him there like he would a child, like he would a wife, maybe her, but in time he's changed the approach, he offers his shoulder for support, lets Griffith's legs do work of their own. Maybe he's taking pity on him. Maybe he's not.

It's there that Guts slips the bandages off his body. It's there that he cleans his wounds, traces the outlines of his bones under his skin submerged in water with gentle hands, careful with the brittleness of his frame. This isn't the touch his body yearned for and it's not in his nature to settle but he lets himself be comforted by the feathery contact, like the batting of a thrush's wings blowing cool air onto his hot face after battle. It's there that he lets Puck ask, Why aren't we moving, because they should be sailing but the Hamadryad remains still, rocking on the waves by the island's shore.

"I dunno," Guts says, and looks out the window. "Let's get ready, go out an' see."

* * *

On deck rain-filled clouds loom above their heads as they do the island. Not a sail is up, not a man at their post.

"Why ain't we leavin'? Guts asks Casca after he poses Griffith on his dead throne made of wooden crates and empty barrels.  
She looks at Griffith and then away, holding back, carefully choosing her words—Language, always language, a barrier that trenches around true intentions, that sequesters dreams, draws their limits, binds them in chains. Beyond the Word there is—Action.  
"The men they—" Casca's words are carried away in the crying of seagulls, the crashing of waves, the lowering of her voice to keep Griffith out of them, out of the world she's building for Guts and herself inside her body.  
"Nah, ya gotta tell 'im." Guts, always loyal like a madman or a knight. Always, until the moment he has to leave, no warning, no parting words, no reason, all because he's too loyal to tell Griffith how disgusting he is, how tiring his games, his battles, how awful his words, his actions, how excruciating the pain of all he's done and has nothing to show for.

The opinions of the men are just words, they crawl on the dirt as they do, but his, his opinion—Griffith doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't want to know.

"Griffith, last night the men, they—" she stops the current of her own thoughts just to stare, watch his eyes maybe study them, waiting for something she can read in them.  
Puck laughs in his stead. I've been given permission to take him, and take him I shall, it giggles. They've not served their purpose yet.  
"Let'er finish, bug."  
No, no, it's Puck, it's Puck, your pronunciation is bad.  
"The men decided to take the ship."  
Puck laughs again. They want to sail the seas as pirates and leave us here, no ship on the road to Wintek sho'on, the way to cross K'oin harri into the fortress of Temaukel. They think the seas will favor them, wind blow on their sails.  
"Some of 'em ain't in on the mutiny. Those who are they're—"  
"None as strong as I am."  
"Yer not really thinkin' on fightin' them all."  
"I'll kill 'em all if I have ta."

Griffith can see it, their dead bodies piled up, smooth white rocks marking their graves on the mounds of the dead covered in snow, their lives extinguished in the midst of battle, paving the way to his dream. Is he allowed to feel remorse? Is he allowed to care or mourn or worry in the least?

He sees it then, a port, thriving and lively with towering masts bobbing on the sea high above the ground, the sea always so much higher than the land. A port on the other end of the island.

Ah, Puck says, let them go. They've not served their purpose yet. We need only men enough to man a ship, the rest is up to the winds, up to the one who's been cursed with finding what he wants.  
"Whatcha say?"  
"Let 'em go? Griffith did you—"

Griffith isn't listening anymore, his mind's eye floods with visions of the ships of Midland surrounding the Hamadryad—the spirits of those trees no longer alive to protect those on board—as the King's soldiers fire their cannons and boards splinter and crack louder than any firing shot, screams of those aboard drowned in seawater along with their voices, their bodies, their words, and the satisfied King—finally revenge has arrived, finally he's buried Griffith deep down underwater where the princess may never find him, may never think of him again—retires back to the depths of his darkened castle where he'll wait, sure in the comfort that he vanquished the threat, for Griffith to come and slice off his head, present it to the princess on a platter from where it'll never look upon her again.

With his right hand finger, Griffith points beyond the Hamadryad, not at the sea but towards the island, on the direction of the port where more ships await for whomever will take them.

"What're ya sayin'?"  
"Yer not even gonna fight? 'Fter all this time, they just gonna leave? An' ya'll let 'em?"

Illsley had been the first to join. No more the children who followed after him through damp backstreets but a real soldier who'd seen his share of war and death and hunger and hadn't asked, just been there one day, because he wasn't a moron, he could see Griffith got it done. Others had come to gather in his wake like spoils of battles he hadn't asked for nor refused. A coal miner who could swing a pike and strike a spear, dent metal helmet and skull in one single blow. A circus clown who threw daggers and danced around swords and joined in with the others in ease. A blacksmith who preferred the bows, loosing arrows into the sun, tracing their trajectory straight into the hearts of those on the other side. A child carrying a toy soldier, not much smaller than him, mimicking Griffith's movements as if it were a dance. A girl who looked death in the eye, handled a sword like a shadow behind Griffith's light, and led the others with firm voice. Illsley had been the first to die, too. No more the children who followed after him through damp backstreets saying they wanted to be back for the day, try and scrape for some food, beg on corners for the kindness of townspeople, and put an end to their game until next morning. But a real soldier who'd seen his share of wars and had found death in the wake of Griffith, right behind his steps. It was the first time he'd asked himself, not with words but with the pressure of his fingernails against the inside of his fist, the tight clenching of his teeth as he walked tired and exhausted away from the pile of dead, Am I allowed to feel remorse? Am I allowed to care and mourn them and to feel? When it is his shadow they are after, his shadow that eclipses their sun, his fire that they sacrifice their dreams to. The answer then, not with words but with waking up the next morning, charging again against those on the other side, drawing his sword and striking his horse and donning his armor, the answer then had been No. It would always have to be No. He'd step on their dismembered hands and tread over their decaying bodies all so he could keep going and behind him all others who hid in the extended shadows cast by his light and followed his dream like a beacon.

Guts is too close now, face next to his own face, anger coloring his every eyelash, every muscle, every twitching of his nose.

"I ain't lettin' 'em go without fightin', it ain't fair. It ain't how's s'posed ta be."

The vision is back, Griffith's hands holding tightly onto Guts' cheeks as he voices the truth out loud, giving birth to that world, You are Mine. Except this time he leans in and places his lips on Guts', soft enough it will leave no traces like shadows coming back to him in the snow, hard enough Guts will feel the scars of it until he draws his very last breath, a kiss like water like smoke like darkness like fire, gentle and firm and leaving no room for wonder no room for question and it is all he's imagined and yet not even close to whatever he's dreamt on the other side of himself, on that bed where only they exist.

Guts pulls back and the vision dissolves with the motion. He looks confused and maybe he should be. Maybe none of this is clear.

"Wha's goin' on?" he asks, turns to Casca then back again at Griffith once she shrugs. "Ya can't give up, ya can't—We've come so far."

Puck hovers next to Guts' face, Is this the only ship in the human realm? And then laughs because Guts doesn't understand. Let them leave, he repeats, let 'em leave, he mimics Guts' accent.

Let them all leave and be buried in the ocean along with the ghost of the Griffith of the Tower and the King's twisted desire for revenge and all the words and promises woven together like chain-mail, forever sinking into the everlasting night and never more touching land.

As long as he's by your side, as long as he holds you, as long as it's together, you'll do all it takes.

Would that really be doing all it takes?

Puck's laughter echoes through the ship, the sea, the breeze, slips through the cracks on the ship, fills up every inch of it, and continues on as the men emerge from inside and onto the deck, settles in the spaces formed between them as they all stand to face Griffith.


	14. setting of the chains

Under heavy clouds, Guts watched Griffith hold his arm firmly to point towards another end of the island, somewhere beyond the hills, something like letting the men go as they pleased.

"Yer not even gonna fight?" he asked, throat dry and fists clenched. "'Fter all this time, they just gonna leave? An' ya'll let 'em?"

He tried coming closer to Griffith and then, just as it was back in the island where his own mother not-mother Shizu came to him, he was somewhere else, back on another hill in another time. Griffith's hands, full and coarse as they'd been that first time, first touch, coming to hold his cheeks tightly to tell him, 'Now you're mine.' Griffith's face, unmarred and young and framed by his long soft hair, coming closer to his own. His own voice trying to find an escape from the depths of his throat, to ask a question, any question, even just to ask himself why he wasn't resisting any of it. And then, on that hill, where Guts had told him he could do with him as he pleased and his life would be all Griffith's if only he won, Griffith had kissed him, soft and slow, and Guts had closed his eyes and leaned upwards towards the one kissing him, clung to the sides of Griffith's shirt as he knelt on wet, muddy grass, his face held tightly by those full hands, and he understood somewhere deep inside of him that was what it meant to belong, belong to someone, somewhere.

 _So you wish for it too and are unable to tell._

Guts batted a hand at Puck, focused on the men closing in on them, surrounding Griffith's sitting space, an empty space left between himself, Griffith, and the men. Casca to one side, far from both groups, as if she'd decided she wanted no part in any of them.

"Yer all really itchin' ta leave, then?"  
"Captain—" Gaston started.  
"Funny comin' from ya."  
"Whassat s'posd ta mean?" Guts faced Mislav, teeth bared.  
 _You know you have no right to be angry now  
_ "Yer abandonin' 'im just like that, 'fter all he's done fer ya."  
"I don't think he cares," Judeau placed his hand on Mislav's chest, a barrier separating him from Guts.  
 _Let them go, he says,_ Puck told everyone, was heard by only a few. _Go as you wish, take the ship._  
"Is that really what he's saying?"  
"What're ya talkin' about?" Mislav slapped Judeau's hand away.  
"The uh the fairy, fairy's saying Griffith says it's fine. He's leaving us the ship."

Griffith, who'd been looking away, towards the point beyond the hills, turned slowly towards them, disinterested, nodded slowly, waved his hand as if shooing away a cat, a mouse, a fly, vermin.

"Why ain't ya angry that they're leavin'? Why ain't ya tryina fight it? Order me ta fight 'em!"

Griffith's smile, slow-forming and tired, echoed against the words Puck—if not Puck who, Griffith himself?—was putting in his mind, You have no right to be so angry now, Once you were told whom you belonged to, and yet—

"And yet what, huh?! What?!" he asked loudly, he looked at Griffith and told himself he was asking Puck. "Was I the only one? Was it me, then, why ya ended up there?"  
 _Why would you ask if you already know.  
_ "Shut up! Let 'im answer!"  
"What's wrong with ya?" Mislav pushed Guts' shoulder with his open palm, shaking him out of his thoughts.

Mislav must've heard his nose breaking before he felt it, bone crunching with a soft thud before blood started to spill.

In a second, the shuffling of feet and clanking of daggers drowned out the muted voices of sea birds and sea winds. Rickert and Kim moved closer to Casca, as if they too had been caught unaware and had no claim. Judeau and Pippin kept Guts and Mislav apart while Gaston and Sam exchanged shoves and Nikol and Lav circled each other, daggers in hand, each and every one of them shouting and yelling, their voices filled with hatred.

 _If you kill each other here you'll be unable to serve your purpose. To die when you must._

Pippin, Judeau, Casca, Rickert all seemed to stop, their movements frozen, at the same Guts himself stopped to watch the fairy.

"Whadja say?" Casca asked, eyes wide open, accent slipping.

 _It is as it is._

It wasn't the words that had stopped Guts, and the others, but the feelings they carried. Like the bug was talking not of an abstract death but a certain one that was sure to come, something it'd already decided.

"What the fuck's goin' on now?" Nikol asked, having dropped his hand, put away his dagger. "What're y'all lookin' at?"  
"The fairy."  
"Again with that, I ain't seein' nothin'."

 _Should I show you?_

Somehow with the glow of distant lightning above the sea, Puck's form—the shape of its skeleton, maybe—appeared to shine, for a second, and then it was back to the creature itself, laughing, hovering above their heads.

 _Did you see me?_

"What is that?" Gaston asked.  
As if forgetting their feud, Sam shook his head in reply. "No idea."  
"S'like that time, out at sea."  
"That fish thing."  
"And the winds comin' back when he told 'em to."  
"An' the stuff the old mariner said."  
"An' that monster Wyald."  
"And Zodd."  
"S'like that time."

No one said out loud but they all heard it. Even Guts. We have to kill him. No one said it out loud but it kept repeating like a mantra, We have to kill him, we have to, we have to, to kill him, to kill, cut by Puck's laughter.

Guts wasted no time getting closer to where Griffith was, hand on the hilt of his dagger, at the ready. Even if no one had said it, he'd never let them.

 _This is unexpected_ , Puck turned to Griffith. _They are fun, you were right. But that king won't be convinced if they all die here._

"What's he talkin' about?" Guts asked Griffith, who looked back at him dead on, as if it was only the two of them on that deck, as if the men, his men, hadn't just recently been threatened to leave him, threatened to kill him. As if he didn't care who left, except for Guts who had no right to be angry now, Guts whose sole departure would have sent him to that tower, to his own death. "What's he sayin', answer me!"

Griffith kept staring directly at him until suddenly he found himself staring out at the horizon, endless stretch of sea above sea, and shattered pieces of wood and metal chunks and sails floating in the midst of wreckage and fire and a pile of dead bodies.

"Wha—?"

He recognized one of the sails, he'd helped Emil mend it some time ago, he couldn't even know when it'd been. He'd helped cause it'd been his own sword, during practice, that'd dealt the blow, undone the seams. He'd turned to Griffith then, ears burning up, "Shit, fuck, I didn't uh," and he'd watched Griffith laugh in the same way he'd laughed back when, before Midland, before court, before, when they were practically children chasing after a dream only Griffith could dream, and Griffith watched stars with him and laughed at his clumsiness and soaked him in water. He'd scratched the back of his head and smiled too, the way he'd smile when Griffith laughed at him losing his footing on an even trail, and shrugged his shoulders, "Guess I overdid it."

He recognized the sail now, floating half draped on a large plank, its edges on fire. Slowly he also recognized every other part of the wreckage, the ship where they'd been living for so long he could barely remember another time, a time before—even though he thought of it often, every day, too much.

"Fuck's happened?"

Once he could recognize the wreckage only the bodies were left. But they were headless, colorless, he couldn't tell who they were as they floated, dismembered, rocked slowly by gentle waves. Only one, though, propped atop a broken plank, arm wrapped around the stomach, larger than he remembered, fiercely protective but lifeless, like so many arms he'd seen in battle. And her head, tilted back, touching water, eyes greyed and whited, like they'd been sucked dry, now that her upper left part was missing, with it the shoulder, the arm, part of the breast.

He knew he was trying for the word No. What came out was anything but a word. He'd never thought himself capable of uttering a noise with such raw pain, even worse now that it was all clear, her arm on her stomach, the remains of the ship, and in the distance the ships of Midland sailing away, victorious, as the evil of Griffith, the White Phoenix, had been defeated, submerged underwater, unaware that Griffith had let his crew take the ship away from him, had sailed with Guts and some others, safely towards the end of a journey that Guts had promised to see with him.

Griffith's bony index finger pushed at his forehead to tilt his head up. When he lifted his face out of his hands he found himself kneeling in front of Griffith, the places where his fingers had dug into the skin of his face stinging.

The men still surrounded them, as they'd been before their deaths at sea, all looking at him the way they'd looked at Corkus.

"Guts?" she spoke.

He noticed her arm crossed over her stomach.

 _Guts._

Puck called his attention back to Griffith, who poked his forehead again, smiling this time, as if he was having fun with the game, forgotten anything else around him.

"They can't go. You can't let them go." Guts couldn't be sure if he actually said those things. Maybe only Puck heard them. Griffith tilted his head, smile softer but not fading.  
 _Weren't you willing to kill them all before? When they threatened to leave? When they threatened to kill him? Weren't you willing to do all it takes? What's changed?  
_ "It's not the same!"  
 _Isn't it?_

Guts looked around himself from his kneeling position, the shapes of men he'd risked his life alongside with, their soft murmurs barely distinguishable from those of the sea, the rhythm of sails and creaking wood and crunching ropes.

"Ya can't go," he sounded desperate, when had he ever sounded like this—as a child, maybe? Not even then. He looked at Gaston, maybe Gaston would understand. "Ya can't, king's still 'fter us. They'll—if ya go, they'll—"  
"The king?"  
"King?"

Guts couldn't tell anymore who was speaking. For a while now, months, maybe years, he'd been unable to tell who was speaking. It wasn't only on the island, it'd been the whole journey.

"The King in Midland?"  
"The king's after us?"  
"In Midland."  
"In Midland we were—"  
"We might."  
"We could, if only."  
"If only."  
"If we hand him his head we'll be spared."  
"If we hand him his head we might be forgiven."  
"If we hand him his head we'll go back to how it once was."  
"If we hand him his head it'll all be alright."  
"Was the only reason."  
"Only reason we followed."  
"Only reason we escaped."  
"Only reason we kept following."  
"If we hand the king his head we'll be as we were."  
"None of us came all this way for this."  
"None of us came all this way for him."  
"Just for a broken man."  
"Just for a man."  
"Just a man."  
"He's just a man."

"Guts, what is it?" she was still standing some ways away, flanked by Rickert and Kim, arms crossed not over her chest but her stomach.  
 _I wonder if he'll be patient enough, strong enough to stick around to know your answer.  
_ "My answer?"  
"Guts?"  
 _You have to choose between them, right? You have to throw one of these things away._

Griffith poked at his forehead again. Guts could feel the ghost of his hands on that hill, that time when they'd kissed—that'd never happened, though, had it?

"Ya can't let 'em go. I saw it, Midland's army catching 'em, they all die."  
"Guts, what're ya sayin'?"  
"'M tellin' ya I saw it," he turned to Casca.  
"Let's get 'im now, while his dog's distracted."  
"Midland's fleet doin' away with everythin'."  
"Now."

Guts turned on his heels, one knee still on the ground, the other bent up, and his dagger out as he bit the air as if biting a sword.

"Stay away from him," he snarled, close to a hiss, desperate still. He closed his mind's eye to it but knew instinctively even imagining Griffith's death at the hands of these men, his own men, wouldn't begin to compare to the things the bug'd made him see. Even if they were to come true.

"I don't think this is getting us anywhere."  
"Shut the fuck up, Judeau. Ya spurred this on."  
"What're you saying you saw?" Casca stepped forward. Now she too was between the men and Griffith.  
"S'this bug puttin' ideas in my head."  
 _I haven't done anything._  
"Yer all here cause of him."  
"Yeah we are."  
"Yeah we are."  
"Wouldn't be here if not for 'im."  
"Would be in Midland."  
"Back home."  
"You," Guts pointed at Judeau with the blade of his dagger, "promised ya'd take 'im there. Now ya'll let 'im be killed?"  
"No one wants that, Guts."

All voices halted, all murmurs, all sound. Some of the men shrugged.

There was silence until Griffith prodded Guts' shoulder.

 _Let's go._

Pointed towards the other end of the island when Guts turned around to look at him. Griffith no longer smiled. This wasn't a game anymore. This was a test. Another one. Hadn't Guts failed all the ones that'd come before? Hadn't he thrown away the things he loved? Hadn't he already made his choice?

He stared at Griffith dead on, his eyes as sharp as they'd been that last morning, that first morning, that first battle, that last battle. He'd made his choice when he'd agreed to that duel. He wasn't one to worry over good or evil, that was Griffith's thing.

"I know," Guts said finally. "I promised I'd do all it takes." And then he stood, towering in front of Griffith, hiding Griffith entirely from the view of the men. He'd done things for Griffith he didn't even want to take back. The choice'd been made without hesitation.

"F'ya promise ta let us go just like that, ya can have the ship and all't comes with." There was a pang with his words, when he told them to take the ship, but that'd been his choice. Theirs too.  
"An' if we don't?" though Guts had spoken to Judeau it was Sam who replied.  
"I'll personally kill all of you."  
"You alone? S'all of us yer up aga—" Judeau stopped him short by placing a hand on Sam's shoulder.  
"Agreed. Leave now."

Guts turned once more, picked Griffith up from where he sat and carried him in his arms as the men parted to make way for them. He'd made his choice the moment he realized it'd all been his fault. The moment he'd felt Griffith's anger, his hatred, accumulated over the year spent in that tower. He'd made his choice before then, too, when he'd done all that needed to be done for Griffith's dream, and more. And then when he'd walked away a snowy morning, lost in the mist, lost all right to be angry at the men for wanting to leave now, lost all right to wish for their lives not to be lost when he'd been the one to trigger all the events that'd landed them here. They'd all signed a contract to do all it took. If they were to be sacrificed, then he'd made that choice himself a long time ago and he'd shoulder that burden, see it to its end. At long last he wasn't confused in the face of all that cold hatred blowing over the snowy hills and coming from the depths of that tower. At long last he could also feel it in his bones.

"Yer comin' with us," Guts told Casca, who flinched. It was the captain's orders.  
Slowly after her others followed. Gaston, Rickert, Kim, Emil, and others Guts didn't see, for he was already on his way downstairs, to gather Griffith's things.  
"Wait," he heard Judeau yell. "She should come with us. Ain't safe out there."  
"Already said she's comin' with us." Guts didn't raise his voice higher. He was sure he could be heard. Could confirm it when Casca entered the captain's quarters not long after, to help gather Griffith's things, and didn't meet either of their eyes even once.  
"I'll get ours too," was all she said before exiting again.

 _I don't think he'll forgive you._

Guts didn't know if the bug was talking to him. Or to Griffith. He told himself he didn't care. There was no time for that, he knew, when he heard Mislav at the door.


End file.
